' ^ 4? 

fc\ *«* J* - % 



'• 4>*«. 




v • :,••- ^ 4? .. 







' ** v ^ 










>°-<K 



; «5°^ 






♦ ^ v N • »••- ^ 4.0* •*^> ^ v N •!••-. G>6 



^X^1K'** V V^ 









«-° t .-ss &.>„ y. •**££-.%. .*".-* 



»* .«j«^. 



o. ♦7KT«- A 




'.' ^ 









^** ^ 



° 4^ 



ft* » • • 







• ^U 4? 











<> 'O • ft 




V i 



••---•« > 



*0« 







.♦".. 



'oV* * 



J?^ • 








V^'V <V^~V V^'V <V~"* 



fc **««♦♦ .*^K%*. X*^ : 



V ^r». •« 




**' * 



: 4> v ^ •; 










.o* .••••/ -l b 







^ <* 















^^ -^ 



'•• ^ v >^ 







/X 



<* *•••* 4° ^f 




*^ °: 




%f 



*#\^\2f. V c° . 



t v > 




^o< 






fit °o ' 




^ ♦; 



0^ 










'.% ft C ° 



/S 




s*-. ^** ' .VS&&-. x^' .-aKv %,♦* .'^»"». x/ 



V^ 1 







5b •?W* A 






o V 



% % ??7Z^ A 



• 47 ^ 









.o.^ 














o* •• 







% 






■• y 



*0 

* 4 °-* 



bK 



+*d« 



V ^°* V 



w 














'" -»1S.*«- 'O. ■+* ,.1-^L-. ~* 




°o. ^T'V 




V 



* v . 






"V ,»\ '-«!. : ^*. ; -?»- > ^. > 



VA 



* *1^L% 



V>.-y ^ 









°o. •^^•\C? 



6\ 






^•iS^- 



**•? 



I*. «■>. 












V •' 



• ^ A* *' 



• ^ 


















^ ••uir* 



^ r ^ 



^ *Wlto V ^ * % ^fe&*. t 






V^ 



- 



vyX'-SK*^ 



jr* .j^i'\ c»*.^8ii% A«^t\ o»*.^ 
^^^ ,^ : .^P». : j* * vl 












^Columbia College Xectures 

ON SUBJECTS CONNECTED WITH 

THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 



BEING DISCUSSIONS 

OF WHICH THE GREATER PART WERE DELIVERED IN 

THE CHURCH OF THE HE A VENLY REST, BEFORE 

THE PRESIDENT, FACULTIES, AND STUDENTS 

OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE IN THE 

CITY OF NEW YORK 

/ BY 

WILLIAM ALEXANDEK, D.D. 

Hon. D.C.L. OXON., Hon. LL.D. DUBLIN 
LORD BISHOP OF DERRY AND RAPHOE 



The fountain light of all our day 
A master light of all our seeing " 



new yo: 



/0 7 

RK 

ARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS 
M DCCC XCIII 






Copyright, 1S93, by Harper & Brothers. 
All rights reserved. 



J 



TO 

THE KIGHT REVEREND THE BISHOP OF NEW YORK 

THE HON. SETH LOW, LL.D., PRESIDENT OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE 

JOSEPH WESLEY HARPER, Esq. 

AND 

THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE IN THE CITY OF NEW YORE 
THIS VOLUME 

1fs 5)eDfcatec- 

WITH GRATITUDE AND RESPECT 



Palace, Londonderry 
December 10, 1892 



PREFACE 



It may be well to state the occasion from which 
this volume sprang and the object at which it aims. 

In the summer of 1891 the author received a 
graceful letter from the Bishop of New York, in- 
viting him to visit that city in the Lent of the fol- 
lowing year. The Bishop wrote as the representa- 
tive of the Trustees of Columbia College. It was 
their wish to give renewed effect to an old founda- 
tion of that celebrated school of science and learn- 
ing, by endowing a series of Conferences or Dis- 
cussions, primarily addressed to the students of the 
college, upon subjects connected with the Evidences 
of Christianity, to be delivered in some suitable and 
convenient church. 

The greater number of these Discussions were ac- 
cordingly spoken in substance in the Church of the 
Heavenly Best, New York, in March, 1S92. They 
were preceded by brief services of prayer and praise 
— perhaps the sweetest and most spiritually harmo- 
nious at which the preacher ever assisted. No detail 



seemed too irksome for the wise and loving care of 
the Eev. D. Parker Morgan, D.D. jSone who were 
present can ever forget the rapt appearance of the 
great congregations ; or the harmony of purpose 
imparted by the preliminary devotion, which pre- 
pared the worshippers to become hearers and sus- 
tained the preacher in his arduous work. The ad- 
dresses were delivered from notes ; but the preach- 
er often derived his inspiration from the moment, 
and he fears has been unable to recover some 
thoughts which seemed to awaken interest at the 
time. 

It should be added that a few of the Discussions 
comprised in the present volume were not delivered 
in New York. Those upon " a literary evidence of 
the Resurrection of our Lord " and upon the Con- 
version of St. Paul in its evidential bearing were 
spoken in the Chapel of the Protestant Episcopal 
Theological School in Harvard University upon the 
invitation of the Rev. William Laurence, Dean of 
the School, for whose boundless hospitality these 
words are but a poor return. Two others are 
added for the sake of giving something like com- 
pleteness to the course.* The last discourse is a 



* The writer, of course, feels that there are still two large 
gaps in this volume — " The Church " and " The Forgiveness of 
Sius." He feels that he could not attempt them without 
another volume. 



"Kamsden Sermon," preached before the Univer- 
sity of Cambridge immediately after the writer's re- 
turn from America. It is added mainly from a de- 
sire to show what his feelings were to the sister 
Church of America while the impression made upon 
him by contact with her Bishops, Clergy, and Laity 
was still fresh. 

II 

It is much more important to state precisely the 
object at which the author aimed. 

When he considered seriously how he should best 
prepare to meet the wishes of the distant friends 
who had laid upon him so high a task, it appeared 
to him there were two departments of the field of 
Christian Evidences to one or other of which he 
might profitably turn. 

The cumulative character of the Evidences of 
Christianity was a favorite topic with thoughtful 
Christians in the Oxford of his youth — rather more 
than forty years ago. It was derived from a preg- 
nant sentence in the " Analogy " — " Probable proofs, 
by being added, not only increase, but multiply, the 
evidence." The meaning is this : If that which we 
are concerned to prove has one strong circumstance 
or principle of apparent truth, the reasoner succeeds 
in constituting one improbability of falsehood. But 
if he succeeds in exhibiting two or three or more 
such circumstances or principles, a process goes on 



beyond simple addition of two or three or more 
improbabilities of falsehood. The improbability of 
the simultaneous co-existence of so many characters 
of truth is something' quite different from the sepa- 
rate existence of one or more of these characters of 
truth. 

Let us suppose that there are seven great heads 
of probable evidence for the truth of Christianity — 
prophecy, miracles, the morality of the Gospel, the 
propagation of the Gospel, the existence of the 
Church, the character of Jesus, the moral and intel- 
lectual character formed by Christianity. Certain 
great prophecies (e. g. the dispersion of the Jews) 
may, with some plausibility, be attributed to acci- 
dental coincidence or to anticipative sagacity ; but, 
after all deductions, a great deal remains quite un- 
accountable on any hypothesis but that of a miracle 
in writing. The miracles, or certain of them, may 
be attributed to successful craft or to the excite- 
ment of the uncritical Oriental imagination. But 
the central miracle of the Eesurrection has the ob- 
stinate tenacity of fact. It is a pearl which all the 
acids of criticism can never dissolve. Now, in the 
perfect and unblemished morality of the Gospel we 
have a performance of a totally different character. 
And it brings this difficulty to the objector : If the 
Resurrection were anything but a fact — whether 
the body were stolen, or the supposed death were 
but a swoon, or the alleged appearances were the 



PEEFACE ix 

passionate illusion of contagious fanaticism — in the 
long run the witness of the apostles and disciples 
(in the second hypothesis of Jesus himself) must 
have been a fraud. So that men not only suffered 
persecution and death for a lie, but went forth 
preaching a religion of whose morality truth was a 
prominent part with a lie upon their lips. The 
propagation of the Gospel, in defiance of learning 
and of power, is a new marvel. The Church, fore^ 
seen in her glory, in her trials, in her extension, is 
another standing miracle. Finally, the character of 
Jesus must have been drawn from a living model. 
If it were not, the inventors must have been even 
greater than their subject. The degree of probabil- 
ity arising from the simultaneous existence of all 
these seven departments is something different 
from, and calculably greater than, the seven sepa- 
rate characters of truth. 

"While the author writes, words come back to his 
memory from a great, but half-forgotten, thinker of 
the Oriel College into whose society Newman en- 
tered sixty years ago. " If man's contrivance, or if 
the favor of accident could have given to Chris- 
tianity any of its apparent testimonies — either its 
miracles or its prophecies, its morals or its propaga- 
tion, or, if I may so speak, its founder — there could 
be no room to believe, nor even to imagine, that all 
these appearances of great credibility could be 
united together by any such causes. If a successful 



craft could have contrived its public miracles, or so 
much as the pretence of them, it requires another 
reach of craft and new resources to provide and 
adapt its prophecies to the same object. Further, 
it demanded not only a different art, but a totally 
opposite character, to conceive and promulgate its 
admirable morals. Again, the achievement of its 
propagation, in defiance of the powers and the ter- 
rors of the world, implied more energy of personal 
genius and other qualities of action than any con- 
curring in the work before. Lastly, the model of 
the life of its founder, in the very description of it, 
is a work of so much originality and wisdom as 
could be the offspring only of consummate power of 
invention ; though, to speak more fairly to the case, 
it seems, by an intuitive evidence, as if it never 
could have been devised, but must have come from 
the life and reality of some perfect excellence of vir- 
tue, impossible to be taken from, or confounded with, 
the fictions of ingenuity. But the hypothesis sinks 
under its incredibility. For each of these supposi- 
tions of contrivance, being arbitrary, as it certainly 
is, and unsupported, the climax of them is an extrav- 
agance. And if the imbecility of art is foiled in 
the hypothesis, the combinations of accident are too 
vain to be thought of. The genuine state of the 
Christian evidence; is this : There is unambiguous 
testimony to its works of miraculous power ; there 
are oracles of prophecy ; there are other distinct 



marks and signs of a divine original within it. And 
no stock but that of truth could in one subject pro- 
duce them all." * 

However, upon consideration the author felt that 
he must move upon a different line. The cumula- 
tive argument might be adapted for a scientific 
treatment upon a large scale ; scarcely (at least in 
his treatise) for the quick play and flexible handling 
required in a conference, where the speaker practi- 
cally dialogues f with his hearers. Moreover, his 
congregation would consist primarily of young 
men, of high education indeed, but probably indis- 
posed for a long and nicely balanced process, and 
who wanted something less intricate, more vivid 
and direct, in meeting the difficulties presented to 
them. 

He was drawn to the selection of his subject by 
the following train of thought. 

1. His own observation led him to the conclusion 
that not only young men — though they principally 
— are led into unbelief or haunted by most distress- 
ing doubts, not about the absolute /izcfo of the Gos- 



* Davison, " Discourses on Prophecy." 

t The verb is borrowed from the author of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews. Speaking of the vivid, dramatic, and personal charac- 
ter of the exhortation in Scripture in one place, he writes : rf/s 
napaKXrjaecos, fjns vyuv as viols StaXeyerat (Heb. xii. 5). Cf. 
"Dost dialogue with thyself?" ("Timon of Athens," act ii. sc. 
ii.). 



XU PREFACE 

pel, but by particular theories as to the how of those 
facts with which they have come to implicate the 
verities themselves. 

Iu this respect it is with the Gospel now as it 
has been in the past. There grows round the creed 
a great mass of traditional exposition, explanation, 
loose statement, pulpit catch-words, the slap-dash 
scholasticism of the public meeting, the railway car- 
riage, the dinner-table, the smoking-room. This is 
taken up in current teaching and incorporated 
with it even by superior minds. In the history of 
the Church it is not only " the doctrine of masses " 
of which certain things " are commonly said " which, 
probably, are " blasphemous fables and dangerous 
deceits." The commentary edges out the text. The 
explanation of the mode in which the fact is assumed 
to be brought about occupies the place which of 
right belongs to the fact only. Probably half the 
objections which perplex young minds and seem to 
them unanswerable — nay, which, in many instances, 
really are so — come from this source. They are 
arguments — sharp, fierce, resistless — against a par- 
ticular explanation, or an assumed mode, of the fact 
— none whatever to the fact itself r 



* Few more singular illustrations of this can be found than 
in "The Corruptions of the Church," by Dr. Homeric — a -writer 
of singular perspicuity and general logical power. See espe- 
cially § iv.," The Resurrection'' (pp. 20-24), where tico theories 



It seemed to the writer that he might, by God's 
grace, do something useful on this side for young 
men in connection with the Evidences of Christian- 
ity. He might lead them to ask, whenever they 
find something which is alleged to be an article of 
our Creed attacked, what that point of Christian 
belief is and what it is not; whether the oppo- 
nent's refutation is not of an imaginary error. For 
instance, how much would be gained by clarifying 
people's minds, so as to get them to put and answer 
these questions distinctly : Whether the Creation 
objected to as absurd and exploded is the view of 
creation to which a believer is absolutely bound ? 
whether that which is objected to in the Incarna- 
tion is really an integral part of the dogma or not ? 
whether the Atonement, the inspiration of Script- 
ure, the Eesurrection of the body, fiercely attacked 
and sometimes not unfairly defeated, are the Atone- 
ment, the inspiration, the Resurrection of the Chris- 
tian creeds — or only the speculations of certain 
schools who assure themselves to be pre-eminently 
orthodox, and have had sufficient merit in other re- 
spects to get their speculations identified with the 



of the mode of the Resurrection— one of them, as we shall see, 
almost contemptuously refuted by St. Gregory of Nyssa — are 
treated as if convertible with the dogma of the Resurrection. 
Even more remarkably is the Atonement travestied by being- 
identified with certain theories concerning the mode in which 
it takes effect {idem, § ii. pp. 11, 12). 



truth itself \ Darwinism, so far as it has advanced 
beyond theory — the Higher Criticism, so far as its 
net results are not crumbling away by constant 
friction with discoveries of texts and monuments — 
may then assume a different and less terrible as- 
pect. The comet which threatened to collide with 
our world of faith is not a compact material struct- 
ure, but a less than nebulous extension through 
whose perspicuous tenuity we can see the stars 
shining. 

2. In carrying out this conception it evidently be- 
came necessary (a) to consider where we are to look 
for the depository of these essential, irreducible cre- 
denda ; and most instructive (b) to inquire what 
form and degree of assent is to be given to such di- 
vine facts, apart from human theories about their 
mode. 

To the first of these (a) the author's reply is the 
two great creeds of the undivided Church, the sim- 
ple, profound, sublime, spontaneous utterance of 
Christendom*; to the second (b) that a mere ineli- 



* It is proper that the writer should here refer to "The 
Foundations of the Creed," by the late Bishop of Carlisle, a 
book worthy of the manly faith and robust intelligence of its 
beloved and venerated author. The present writer had inde- 
pendently arrived at much the same conclusions about portions 
of Pearson's work many years ago, and believes that this volume 
would have been written very much upon the same lines with- 
out it. As it is, he has derived much profit and delight from 



nation towards the theory of the mode of a Divine 
fact is an opinion, while an assent to the Divine 
fact is a conviction. 

It was on these lines that the plan of these dis- 
cussions was drawn in the draft laid before the au- 
thorities of Columbia College. Some Discussions, 
not delivered in the Church of the Heavenly Best 
were afterwards added to give something of com- 
pleteness to the volume ; that the central fact of 
Christianity, the Eesurrection of Jesus, and its cen- 
tral dogma, his Divinity, might not appear to be 
omitted. 

These sheets must not leave their author's hand 
without an expression of thankfulness to the many 
American friends, within and without his own com- 
munion, who made their visit so full of pleasure to 
himself and to the companion of his voyage. They 
can never cease to think of the gracious hospitality 
of American homes and of the tender warmth of 
American hearts. For himself America has proved 
to him that it is a libel upon human nature which 
tells the man over sixty years of age that he can 
never make a new friend. 

May this volume tend in some degree to deepen 



the Bishop of Carlisle's pages — especially pp. 1, 28, 31, 91, 341, 
361. He might have improved his notice of omissions in the 
creeds if he had read, before drawing it up, the bishop's Intro- 
duction, pp. 12-19. 



XVI PREFACE 

convictions, at once truly sacred and truly rational, 
in the hearts and minds of inquirers ! May the 
Holy Spirit of truth pardon something that may 
be erroneous, much that must be imperfect in it, 
and quicken it by his heavenly influence for Jesus 
Christ's sake ! 



CONTENTS 



Discussion Page 

I. Convictions . 1 

II. First Primary Conviction 35 

III. Second Primary Conviction ..... 63 

IV. Third Primary Conviction. ..... 91 

V. Fourth Primary Conviction 129 

VI. Fifth Primary Conviction. . . . . .159 

VII. Sixth Primary Conviction. . . . . .183 

VIII. Seventh Primary Conviction. • . . .199 

IX. Eighth Primary Conviction . . . . .277 

X. Ninth Primary Conviction . . . . .299 



E)iscu0sion 11 



Delivered in substance in the Church of the Heavenly Eest, Sunday, 
March 13th, 1892 



PREFATORY 



" II faut que les verites s'incorporent a nous, et nous penetrant 
longtemps ... II y a une penetration lente de chaque jour, une 
intussusception de la verite . . . qui fait que cette verite de- 
vient a notre ame ce que la lumiere du soleil est a nos yeux, 
qu'elle eclaire sans qu'ils la cberchent." — Maine de BmAN. 



CONVICTIONS 

" Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever. 
Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. 1 ' — Heb. 
xiii. 8, 9. 

I 

Two German friends once stood and gazed up- 
ward inside the Cathedral of Amiens. They paused 
for a while in speechless admiration of a strength 
like that of giants associated with an industry like 
that of dwarfs. One of the two friends (his name 
is of high distinction in circles which assuredly are 
not theological — Heinrich Heine) looked at his com- 
panion and said, " You may see here the difference 
between opinions and convictions — opinions cannot 
build such cathedrals ; convictions can !" 

There are few who do not instinctively feel that 
Heine's witness is true. If we are Christians there 
is so much building to be done. JSTot only cathedral 
building ; not only outward works and organizations 
— the building up of ourselves, the building in of oth- 
ers — and this "building up of ourselves" must be "on 
our most holy faith." Faith is the foundation. Strong 
must be the stones on which such a fabric is to rest. 
There are so many opinions, so few convictions. 

"When we consider thought not as comprising all 
processes and products of mind, but those of inves- 



TKIMAKY CONYICTK »"S 

ire four degrees in tl 
propositions which we question in regard to the 
measure of acceptance which we accord to them. 
(1) We have two opposite alternatives as to which 
the mind is in absolute equipoise, absolutely neutral. 
The symbol of this mental condition is Montaigne's 
pair of scales, with the motto, " Que scais-je V' This 
is a state of suspended speculation, and the name 
psychologically of such a state is doubt. (2) In 
many cases, however, there is a very slight turning 
of the balance one way or the other, instead of the 
previous equilibration. Something like a dawn be- 
gins to whiten in the doubtful sky. This state of 
thought is suspicion. (3) One of the two alterna- 
tive propositions advances further. It appears to 
have a distinct surplus of evidence. The doubt has 
practically disappeared ; suspicion is an inadequate 
term. The proposition, instead of being pale and 
shadow}^ in the background, is flushed with the glow 
of passion or reduplicated in the imagination by 
the applauding voices of party. Yet, in calmer and 
more judicial moments there is a voice which warns 
the intellect to beware of deception — that there is 
an unknown something which may turn the scales ; 
that somewhere or other a resistless refutation may 
lie in wait. This state of thought is opinion. 
(•i) But beyond opinion there is something higher 
and stronger. There is a conclusion which takes 
possession of the mind at once forever and will not 
allow itself to be gainsaid. Such are mathemat- 
ical truths or principles logically derived from 
certain premises or received upon authority from 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 5 

which there is no appeal. Such, again, are the 
moral and spiritual principles which gain possession 
of every avenue of the soul. They not only take 
the reasoning faculties captive as in necessary sub- 
ject matter. Their possession is a triumph and sets 
itself to a manifold music. They cannot be more 
proved than mathematical truths, but they are 'bet- 
ter proved in a certain sense. These propositions 
are the objects of faith ; they are convictions. The 
three first classes of propositions are incomplete 
thoughts without absolute assent. But he who is 
convinced, who believes, thinks with absolute assent. 
In the spiritual sphere he is convinced by divine 
authority. The will is touched by that authority 
and moves the intellect in the same direction.* For 
the Christian the conviction is a psychological fact. 
A moment comes when his thought rests, though it 
does not sleep. 

We have seen what we mean by conviction. On 
what subjects of belief is conviction necessary and 
authorized ? f 

* " Ojnnio . . . cogitatio informis absque firma assensioue. Pro- 
prium est creclentis ut cum assensu cogitet . . . per auctoritatem di- 
vinam, propter irnperium voluntatio moventis intellectual " (St. 
Tbom. Aquinas, " Sumraa Theol." 2 a 2" e Quaest. I. Art. 4). The 
reader who wishes to see how the philosophy of conviction, 
sound in its own region, breaks down when applied logically 
to establish the infallibility of the Church of Rome, will do well 
to read Mr. Cape's account of his melancholy experience. 

1 1 am quite aware that I have used the word conviction, con- 
victions, with some logical laxity. But by conviction I generally 
understand the attitude of the mind thinking, by convictions the 
several propositions which it formulates. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

\Ve of our Church should observe that the Apos- 
tles' Creed is emphatically the layman's creed. 
Nothing else is absolutely required of him at Bap- 
tism or at Confirmation ; nothing else when he is 
visited in the hour of sickness or approaching death. 
In the plain, simple, stately declaration of the 
American bishops it is said, " Holy Scripture and 
the Nicene Creed are inherent parts of the sacred 
deposit, sufficient statements of the Christian faith." * 
But the Xicene Creed, we are told, is too much. 
" The so-called Christian Church," one said in Lon- 
don last season, " has spent the best of its energy 
in discussing subjects almost unintelligible and al- 
together un practical. For centuries ecclesiastics 
fought like tigers over the question whether Christ's 
substance was ofioovcrios or 6[xolov<tlo<; — i. e. the same 
as the substance of the Father, or only similar. 
The two words differ only by a letter, and that the 
smallest letter in the Greek alphabet ; and the size 
of the letter about corresponds to the importance of 
the distinction." One would think that it does not 
require much logic to perceive that the intellectual 
and moral moment of propositions is not to be 
measured by the comparative length of the letters 
or syllables of which they are composed. " There 
is one God" is just one letter longer than " There is 
no God." Between ofioovcrtos r.nd o/aoioihtio? there 



* "Proof is production of evidence that satisfies the require- 
ments of scientific logic" (Professor Huxley). — "Belief is the 
assent of the mind to the hypothesis most in accordance with 
observed facts" (Mr. Jennings, in the Times of Jan. 13th, 1S92). 



PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 7 

is, indeed, just one letter ; but that letter is God. 
That " one Iota," though the smallest letter in the 
Greek alphabet, shall not pass away from the Creed 
until heaven and earth pass away. 

In these discussions I propose to take the two 
Creeds as abstracts and collections of primary con- 
victions. I shall deal with some of their principal 
contents : "With the belief in the Father Almighty, 
Maker of heaven and earth ; in the Incarnation of 
the Lord Jesus Christ ; in one sense of the Judg- 
ment ; in the Holy Ghost as speaking by the proph- 
ets ; in the Resurrection of the body. It will be my 
object to state each of these primary convictions in 
its irreducible minimum, so to speak ; in its divine 
simplicity apart from all particular theories upon 
the subject, however popular or prevalent they may 
be. Such a statement, if successful, and its proof 
cannot fail to contribute something to the evidences 
of Christianity. 

II 

Let me remind you of the character of the Creed 
which is so often overlooked. 

That which is vital and eternal in the Apostles' 
Creed has for centuries been so overlaid with the 
loads of learning flung upon it, so weighted with 
what after all are accessories and not its substance, 
that average Christians often fail to understand its 
purport and characteristics. I shall not discuss its 
origin, nor the various forms which it may have as- 
sumed in different Churches. I shall not deal seri- 
ously with the assumption that before separating 



8 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

upon their mission, each of the twelve Apostles con- 
tributed his article to the "symbol and contessera- 
tion of faith." I shall attempt to bring before you 
those articles with which I deal in their proper 
form, separated from the temporary accretions and 
changing scholasticisms with which they have be- 
come associated. I shall avoid, as far as I can, en- 
trenchment behind defences which have proved un- 
tenable. An unsound defence is only a danger. 
The outlying villages which give shelter to an en- 
emy had better be burned. 

The Kicene Creed is absolutely one in substance 
with the Apostles' Creed. Only it gives us the 
truth about the Divine Personality as it was fused 
under the fires of controversy. It affords a clue by 
which we may escape from the mazes of erroneous 
speculation which unhumanize or undeify the God- 
Man. And it does so more effectually, because it 
gives these truths in an uncontroversial form. Dog- 
ma reposes in the Nicene Creed like the couchant 
lion, who rests in the attitude from which he can 
spring with his maximum of power. 

Ill 

The text directs us to the true characteristics of 
the Christian Creed. 

Every accuracy is to be respected because it is of 
the noble family of truth. The punctuation of the 
passage which stands at the head of this discussion 
is of capital importance. The previous verse must 
be so translated and stopped as to avoid all excuse 
for supposing that "Jesus Christ" is in apposition 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 9 

with " the end of their conversation." The sacred 
writer speaks to the Hebrew Christians of the duty 
of remembering their dead leaders in the faith. 
" Eemember them that have the rule over you, be- 
ing such as spake the word of God to you, of whom 
surveying the issue of their conversation imitate the 
faith." Then there is a full stop, a marked pause 
followed by a reflection. From all changing priests 
the writer's spirit rises to the unchanging High 
Priest.* The sigh of memory is changed for the af- 
firmation of a fact. The Bock of Ages is under his 
feet. The brief " Oraison Funebre" is followed by 
a Creed which is also an " Elevation." Through the 
"yesterday" of the dead rulers; through the "to- 
day " of the stormy present ; through the " forever " 
of the undying soul and of the eternal Church, 
"Jesus Christ" is the great "the Same" of the 
psalm quoted in the first chapter f — aye, and to the 
ages. 

Then w T e have four creed principles. (1) The sub- 
ject of it is a Person, not a congeries of speculative 
doctrines. (2) The aim of him who rightly holds it 
is outside self, right forward. Christ is the fixed 
pole in the whirl of speculations. " Be not carried 
aside"; allow not yourselves to be drawn off to side 
issues.:}: (3) As to the structure and substance. Not 
a collection of curiously tessellated opinions ; not 
patchwork or piebald. (4) As to language and 
thought. Not Aristotelian or Platonic ; not Kantian 



; Heb. xiii. 7, 8. to Avros, Heb. i. 12 ; Ps. cii. 27. 

I /xri irepicpepecrde, Heb. xiii. 9. 



10 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

or Hegelian ; not scholastic, Roman, or reformed. 
" Theology," a celebrated French academician has 
contemptuously said, " is a patois, not a language." 
Hut the Creed speaks the sweet patois of the hills 
of God and the streets of the heavenly Jerusalem.. 
Humboldt has told of an old Mexican parrot which 
chattered sentences in the language of a tribe which 
had become extinct, and of which no senile living 
soul knew one word. The true language of Chris- 
tian theology will not be obsolete in heaven itself. 
Then the Creed is not to be merely argumentative, 
or metaphysical, or of speculative opinion. The 
course which it impels and directs is not that of the 
butterfly wavering from flower to flower, but of the 
arrow between the string and the butt. Its lan- 
guage is not to be of tessellated colors or of exotic 
growth — it is to breathe the sweet majestic simplic- 
ity of home. " Be not carried aside with doctrines 
which are of foreign growth as well as diverse." * 
The Creed is to be one perfect whole, not a thing of 
showy tags and aggregated fragments ; but one as 
the flower in nature is one, as the bell must be fused 
in one if it is to give out harmonious resonance. A 
developed Creed is a big bell, but the quality of a 
bell's tone depends upon its metal. A bell of pew- 
ter, however big, is pewter still ; a bell of silver, 
however small, is silver still. 

IV 
This Creed of the Primary Convictions of Chris- 



* AiSa^cus noiKikais kci\ £(vais, II ob. xiii. 9. 






PRIMARY C0XYICTI0XS 11 

tenclom is a creed of facts, or of expectations based 
upon those facts. 

All thoughtful persons must hare noticed that 
there are remarkable omissions in both Creeds — 
more especially in the earlier — omissions of much 
significance in any formula which is to be regarded 
as a summary of the Christian faith. Some of the 
principal of these may be briefly mentioned. The 
Christian Church presents herself to the nations 
with a book, or " library " of books, in her hand. In 
the Apostles' Creed not a syllable is said about the 
book. In the Nicene Creed, no doubt, there are two 
references to it, both, however, to one portion of it, 
the Prophets. Justification by faith is a wholesome 
and comfortable doctrine, but it is not explicitly 
mentioned. The existence of angels and archan- 
gels is a verity of revelation, soothing and magnifi- 
cent for a believer. Not a word is said about these 
exalted beings in either of the Creeds, unless they 
are to be included in " the all things invisible " of 
which God the Father Almighty is the Maker. Sac- 
raments are necessary for the very existence and 
sustenance of the Church. In the Apostles' Creed 
neither is mentioned. In the Kicene Creed Bap- 
tism is splendidly summarized, " One Baptism for 
the remission of sins." But even in it the Eucharist 
finds no place; though the hearts of the redeemed 
then and ever murmured round it, like bees round 
the flowers. The special miracles of Jesus (one of 
the two main pillars of Christian evidences) are not 
adverted to in either Creed ; the Creed is so busy 
with the Miracle which Jesus is that it cannot now 



12 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

look even to the miracles which Jesus did. Chris- 
tians believe that there is such a thing as final sep- 
aration from God ; neither is that directly and dis- 
tinctly mentioned in either Creed. The great and 
good Bishop Pearson, " the very dust of whose writ- 
ings is gold," most unfortunately, as I venture to 
think, connected this awful subject with the "life 
everlasting" at the close of the Creed, thus hope- 
lessly confusing the Scriptural conception of " life " 
with mere chronological duration. 

Y 

These Creeds of Primary Convictions are so dis- 
posed as to be throughout Creeds of facts (or of ex- 
2>ectations based upon those facts) and Creeds of joy. 

" I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of 
heaven and earth." 

God created the world. The question between 
faith and science even now is not tchether the uni- 
verse was created by Mind. If it requires Mind to 
construe the universe, could mindlessness have con- 
structed it? The Nicene Creed goes further. It 
speaks of that whereof we find traces as we are 
brought into contact with purposes which are anal- 
ogous to our own ; of which St. Paul and St. John 
are full. " I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, by 
whom all things were made." Yes ! " He is the 
image of that God who is not, cannot be seen, the 
First-born of all creation ; for in Him was created 
the whole sum of things that are in the heavens and 
upon the earth ; and He is before all things, and in 
Him all things collectively cohere into system, who 



PKIMAEY CONVICTIONS 13 

is Beginning." Or to refer to the no less splendid 
Christology of the Epistle to the Hebrews — " The 
effulgence of the Father's glory, and the stamped 
copy of his substance, and so bearing on the whole 
sum of things by the utterance of His power" ; not 
merely an Atlas -^bearing, but a Mind and Will on- 
bearing.* 

We live in the midst of discordant voices of spec- 
ulation. Over theories of the mist and of the mud 
the splendid song of the great triumph of faith rings 
out in the first article of the Creed, the first Primary 
Conviction of the children of God. It is an act of 
thought quickened by the touch of the inspiration 
which is called faith. "By faith we make it think- 
able f that the worlds are adjusted by a word of 
God, with the result that the sum total of things vis- 
ible is not in existence from an origin in visible phe- 
nomena. Belief in a Creator, in the creation, is ra- 
tional as well as spiritual, an act of the mind as well 
as of the soul. 

The first article of the Creed lets us see that Ag- 
nosticism is a malady of thought. There are three 
great postulates of reason — the existence of self, of 
the world, of God. It was tokl of a Scotch philos- 
opher that, when a young man came to enter his 
class, the professor would ask the youth whether 
a doubt of his own existence had ever laid hold of 
his mind ; and if not, would assure him that he nev- 
er could be a philosopher. He who never doubts 



* Coloss. i. 15-18 ; Heb. i. 3 (<fiep<ov re ra ndvTa). 
t Iltcrret, voovfiev, k.t.X., Heb. XI. 3. 



14 primary convictions 

may never be a metaphysical man, but he who al- 
ways doubts these primary postulates of thought 
will never be a man at all. lie will never have the 
virility of the soul, the pith and grip of intellectual 
and moral manhood. Hence the sad metaphysician, 
wandering about like a day-dream. Hence the young 
faces elongated like a ladder, but a ladder with no 
angels ascending and descending. The first article 
of the Creed is the article of the three splendid pos- 
tulates. The believer pronounces the great words, 
I, heaven and earth, God ; his own personality, the 
existence of the world, the Personality and Father- 
hood of God. With his face turned eastward he as- 
serts his postulates before man and God. He who 
can go so far is strong and happy. He bathes him- 
self in the dew of heaven and is strong with an ev- 
erlasting strength. He sees all things in a new light. 
He is made free of nature and finds poetiy a possi- 
bility. He sickens not at the glory of the peacock, 
nor is saddened by the diminished solemnity of the 
primeval forest, nor wearies of the ideals of art and 
song, He finds not folly in Shakespeare, nor hum- 
drum in Handel, nor a measurable quantity of none 
of the cleanest water in the glory of Niagara. 
Thought is not for him a secretion of the brain, 
nor modesty an invention of ungraceful women. 
He sees nature at once working and sleeping with 
those splendid dreams upon its lifted face. He hears 
with opened ears the light motion of the everlasting- 
fingers that ply the loom of God. 

In its first part, then, our Creed is a Creed of sun- 
shine. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 15 

The second part of the Creed contains the belief 
in Jesus Christ. What belief ? 

A belief in facts. His divinity (" our Lord, very- 
God from very God"), His Humanity, Conception, 
Incarnation, His suffering life at a deiinite period of 
human history before His Passion, His Death, His 
Kesurrection " according to the Scriptures," His As- 
cension and session at God's right hand, and our 
expectation founded upon these facts that " He shall 
come again to judge the quick and the dead." 

Of the evidence for these primary convictions it 
will be my duty to speak again. I now ask you to 
consider what general impression is here conveyed 
of the whole character and manifestation of Jesus ? 
It is the impression stamped upon Christendom. It 
is not the monastic or Calvinistic Christ,- the Christ 
of the " Institutes " or the " De Imitatione," only. 
It is the Jesus of the Gospels, for all His majesty 
so sweet and pathetic. It is He who, knowing that 
He came from God and went to God, took a towel 
and girded Himself ; not disdaining to wash every 
foot that is stained with life's dust or stabbed with 
life's thorns. Ever with God and God ; " measur- 
ing with calm presage the infinite descent" from 
the songs of heaven to the sorrows of earth — to the 
Virgin's womb, to the cradle and the cross; return- 
ing gloriously to the home from which he came. 
This Christ of the Creed is the Christ of the Gos- 
pel, of Christendom, of the human heart. 

No doubt there is more behind and below. The 
great English Cardinal was not altogether wrong 
who saw the judge in the Crucifix. The Creed is 



16 1TJMAEY CONVICTIONS 

like a great mountain which has deeps of gloom as 
well as " visionary majesties of light." But the voice 
which speaks to us through it says again, "Come 
unto Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye 
shall find rest unto } T our souls." " Him that Com- 
eth unto Me I will in no wise cast out." The mot- 
to to be inscribed over it is, " The epiphany of the 
sweet-naturedness and philanthropy of God our Sav- 
iour." * The " vox humana " is the sweetest stop in 
the organ of the Creed. From the centre of a hu- 
man heart He feels round the whole vast circumfer- 
ence of human sorrow. 

In their second as in their first part the Creeds 
are Creeds of sunshine. 

The third part of the Creed is concerned with the 
Holy Ghost ; with some consequences of His exist- 
ence and divinity— viz. the prophetic Scriptures and 
the Holy Catholic Church; and with certain tri- 
umphant corollaries of the whole Creed—" the for- 
giveness of sin, the resurrection of the body, and 
life everlasting." 

Every child of man has three original wants. He 
is born into a society dislocated and divided by self- 
ishness and passion, with no unity and no moral 
ideal — he wants a higher form of society. He is 
born with a nature rebellious to its own higher 
principle, and full of transgressions against its own 
rightful law — he wants forgiveness. He is exposed 
to suffering and is fatally bound to die — he wants 
We. 

* ore Se 7; xprjiTTOTtjs Koi rj (pi\avdpci)Trla (Trecfiiivrj tov (rurijpos, 

k.tX (Titusiii.4). 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 17 

Here is the supply. Here is a society, one, uni- 
versal, holy, continuous, visible. Here is the asser- 
tion of forgiveness of sins, both initial in Baptism 
and subsequently. And as the first article of the 
Creed began with a declaration of the origin of nat- 
ural existence from "the Maker of heaven and 
earth, and of all things visible and invisible," so 
the last speaks of the other and imperishable exist- 
ence. Thus the Creed begins with life and ends 
with life — not with the death which knows no life, 
but with the life which knows no death ! 

Such are the two Creeds in texture and character 
— in their texture based wpon facts, in their character 
inspiring and joyful. There is a parsimony in their 
list of credenda; a wise disinclination to strain the 
cords of assent. We find in them no theory of in- 
spiration, of the Atonement, of miracles, of the res- 
urrection of the body ; no map of the unseen world. 
The mode of statement of some articles may have 
been determined by long controversies, but there is 
nothing to force us to think of them. The guns of 
battle have been melted into bells of worship. Ar- 
ticles of controversy are necessary for particular 
Churches and may require to be signed by their 
ministers. But the universal Church must speak 
the language of peace. When the weary and heavy- 
laden ask her for refuge, she cannot invite them to 
rest upon controversial bayonets with the points 
turned upward. Every article must be sound, 
proved, seasoned. Any mere development would 
be like a rib of dry-rot in a ship, dangerous in itself 
and likely to weaken the rest of the structure. Ev- 
2 



18 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

erv article must be believable, worthy of belief, be- 
lieved wherever Christianity as such exists. It must 
be a Catholic conviction, not a local and temporary 
opinion. I am thankful that the whole Church has 
two Creeds ; I am almost equally thankful that she 
has not thirty-nine articles, content, as I am, to re- 
ceive them for my part, and valuable as they are for 
English Christianity. 

VI 

Some important lessons naturally arise about 
those Primary Convictions, the evidence for which 
we are to consider together. 

The Creed concerns itself with Faith in an Eter- 
nal Person, not with mere doctrines even about 
Him, much less with psychological speculations 
about ourselves. 

If this be so, moods and feelings are unsatisfac- 
tory tests. The heresies of the first century were 
heresies upon the Person of our Lord ; those of the 
nineteenth century are mainly heresies of the emo- 
tion. The remedy against the former was the Script- 
ural conception of the Person of our Lord ; the rem- 
edy against the latter is the Scriptural conception of 
the "theological graces," faith, hope, and charity. 

Let us take one question, the answer to which is 
often supposed to be decisive, " Do I love Jesus ?" 
So it might be were the answerer infallible ! A 
warning is supplied by the greatest delineator of 
human nature. The aged king asks his three daugh- 
ters how much they love him. Two of them reply 
in lofty language ; they heap hyperbole upon hyper- 



PRI2HAKY CONVICTIONS 19 

bole. Perhaps they were not altogether hypocriti- 
cal in their professions. But one says comparative- 
ly little. Her " heart is richer than her tongue." 
Which of the three loved him most ? 

The answer to this question and others of the 
kind depends, sometimes largely, upon bodily con- 
dition. It rises and falls with nerve-storms, with i 
the condition of the biliary ducts. Dyspepsia de- 
termines mental vertigo. Blue -pills annihilate a 
world of visions. Or if not this — Avhen we walk un- 
der a pale sky, beneath ghostly trees ; when we are 
sad with the dripping rain and the sobbing wave ; 
much more in the days of sorrow, when we cry, 
" Wilt Thou break a leaf driven to and fro ? and wilt 
Thou pursue the dry stubble ? For Thou writest bit- 
ter things against me, and makest me to possess the 
iniquities of my youth" — the spiritual outlook be- 
comes tinged by the natural inlook. The whole 
landscape is yellowed by the medium through which 
we contemplate it. Moods of lofty self-flattery are 
often no less deceptive. In the Church or in the 
religious journal, as on the Exchange, high interest 
means bad security. 

We may give fixity to our faith by throwing our- 
selves into the spirit of the Nicene Creed. 

An eloquent historian of the Church - has pointed 
out the remarkable contrast suggested by the place 
where the Creed was originally pronounced — in 
Asia Minor. The great cities of that country were 



* "L'Eglise et l'Empire Romaine," par M. Albert de Broglie, 
torn. ii. chap, iv., esp. pp. 68-70. 



20 primary convictions 

associated with philosophers and religions — with 
Poseidon, Phoebus, Artemis, with Pythagoras and 
Thales. The long elaboration of thought, the pas- 
sionate dreams of imagination, supplied nothing 
more spiritual than idols, nothing more solid than 
the sunlit mists of mythology. But within six 
weeks three hundred and eighteen men, most of 
them unknown to one another, speaking many lan- 
guages, and brought from the ends of the world, 
could give a formula which told of the Divine Mat- 
ure, of the origin of the world, of the destinies of 
man ; which answered the eternal questions — what 
am I ? from whence do I come ? where am I ffoino- ? 
— in a shape at once lofty and concise ; at once so 
noble that it almost seems to touch the " Gloria in 
Excelsis," and so precise that philosophy and legis- 
lation can show nothing superior. It has crossed 
every sea and outlived every generation. Every 
Sunday in every land ; in high cathedrals and in ru- 
ral churches ; in London, Paris, Koine, St. Peters- 
burg ; here in New York — it is recited or chanted. 
This " hymn of the Divine Unity " is also a splendid 
assertion of the glory of redemption and of the 
hopes of man ; the unchanging record of the Pri- 
mary Convictions of Christendom. The living and 
the dead are with us as we repeat the Xicene Creed ! 
The Church deals with us as the nun dealt with the 
knight when she sent him forth on his quest — 
"As she spake 
She sent the deathless passion in Iter eyes 
Thro' him, and made him hers, and laid her mind 
On him, and he lelicrcd in her belief."* 



Idyls of the King, The Holy Grail." 



PKniABY C0XVICTI0XS 21 

It is significant that the still shorter and simpler 
Creed called the Apostles' Creed is that as to which 
alone the sick man is to be examined in the Visi- 
tation for the Sick. " A very lifeless, formal, and 
unprofitable rubric, uncomfortable and tending to 
death," some have said. 

Listen to a story which is true. A dying boy be- 
gan to feel the very touch of death. He feared the 
great change, the dread unknown — " what dreams 
may come " in the seeming sleep. Father and moth- 
er, friend and nurse, said their little word, hymn 
and text and prayer. The child asked to be prop- 
ped upon his pillow and whispered, " Let me sa\ r my 
Creed !" He said it from " I believe in God the Fa- 
ther Almighty " down to " the life everlasting,"' 
and then smiled and breathed out these words, 
" JSTow I am not afraid to die !" And we, God's chil- 
dren, many of us with white hairs — with our mem- 
ories of wasted years, of withering passions, of bit- 
ter hatreds, of defiling sins— do we not want to 
make an act of faith, so to say our Creed that we 
may not be afraid to die. It is a Creed of adamant 
and of sunshine; it could not be the second if it 
were not the first. It is a Creed of convictions, not 
of opinions; and with convictions only can we face 
eternity. 



NOTES 



A 

Peaksox's summary of Article XII. of the Apostles' Creed 
begins thus: "I do fully and freely assent unto this . . . that 
the unjust after their resurrection and condemnation shall be 
tormented for their sins in hell, and shall so be continued in 
torments forever, so as neither the justice of God shall ever 
Cease to inflict them, nor the persons of the wicked cease to 
subsist find suffer there." Strange, surely, to range this under 
life everlasting! But the subject -will more properly be con- 
sidered in another Discussion. When the time is ripe and the 
man ready for a second great book upon the Creed, or for a 
final revision of Pearson, the exposition of three momentous 
articles must be recast, or entirely rewritten — the 1st, the 11th, 
and the 12th. Nearly the whole of Pearson on the 12th article, 
so far as it abides thought and criticism, must be placed under 
the 7th article. 

B 

Two remarkable omissions in the Creeds should be noticed. 

1. No theory of inspiration of Scripture is formulated in the 
Creeds, beyond the statement that ''the Holy Ghost spake by 
the Prophets," and the assertion that " the third day Christ 
rose again according to the Scriptures." 

2. No theory of the mode of the Atonement is to be found in 
the Creeds. This is very remarkable when we consider the 
extent to which theories of the mode in which it became ef- 
fectual have occupied the minds of theologians for ages. One 
of these, indeed, has in later days been considered absolutely 



PRIMAKY CONVICTIONS 23 

identical with orthodoxy inside as well as outside the Church. 
Bishop Butler writes,- in his simple magisterial way, "How 
and in what particular way it (the sacrifice of Christ) had this 
efficacy there are not wanting persons who have endeavored 
to explain ; but I do not find that the Scriptures have explained 
it . . . Nor has any one reason to complain for want of further 
information, unless he can show his right to it." That it has 
a marvellous efficacy over and above the grasp which it lays 
upon the affections by the exquisite beauty of example and 
sympathy, Butler states with all his serene and stately strength : 
" Others, probably because they could not explain it, have been 
for taking it away, and confining His office of Redeemer of the 
world to His instruction, example, and government of the 
Church. Whereas the doctrine of the Gospel appears to be not 
only that He taught the efficacy of repentance, but rendered it 
of the efficacy it is by what He did and suffered for us; that 
He obtained for us the benefit of having our repentance accept- 
ed unto eternal life ; not only that He revealed to sinners that 
they were in a capacity of salvation, and how they might ob- 
tain it ; but, moreover, that He put them into the capacity of 
salvation by what He did and suffered for them. And it is our 
wisdom thankfully to accept the benefit, by performing the 
conditions upon which it is offered on our part, without dis- 
puting how it was procured on His."* One long familiar with 
the passage can scarcely hear the strong, simple, sublime words 
of the Nicene Creed, "Who for us men and for our salvation, 
came down from heaven, and was made Man, and was incar- 
nate, and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate," with- 
out being reminded of Butler. 

It is remarkable to note how Shakespeare's lordly grasp and 
comprehensive intuition perceived this large reading of the 
Atonement by Catholic Christianity, how his penetrating eye 
caught the divine fact rising in sunlight over the mists of 
human speculation. Not, of course, that he was a professional 



"Analogy," Part II. chap. v. § 6. 



24 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

theologian, any more than he was a professional statesman or 
logician or botanist. But the final principles of all great 
systems loomed before him. Not, of course, always distinct — for 
that involves articulation into parts; and only the specialist 
can be distinct. But always clear, for that which is clear is 
presented to us, possibly at a distance, but as one. And it is 
the inheritance of the true philosopher and the great poet to 
be clear as it is of the specialist to be distinct. 

"... in those holy fields, 
Over whose acres walk'd those blessed feet, 
Which, fourteen hundred years ago, were nail'd, 

For our advantage, on the bitter cross." * 

These are the ample and stately lines befitting the conception 
and utterance of a royal speaker, f 

Nor is a passage wanting which brings out the conception of 
the remedy being the result of divine labor and divine wis- 
dom, a seeking and finding on the part of the suffering Son of 
God. It is worthy of note how the tenderer and more intimate 
view fell from a woman's lips — 

" Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once ; 
And He that might the vantage best have took 
Found out the remedy" % 

It is the same spirit which breathes in the noble and truly 
philosophical nescience of the simple hymn — 

" I cannot understand the woe 

That Thou wert pleased to bear, 
dying Lord ! I only know 
That all my hope is tfiere." 



* "King Henry IV.," Part I. act i. sc. i. 

\ "The world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son." — John of Gaunt, in 
" Richard II." 

\ Isabel, "Measure for Measure," act ii. sc. ii. With Isabel's 
words in "Measure for Measure" cf. auoviav \vtpujgiv evpafievoe 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 25 

in the sweet profundity of the Collect, "Who hast given 
Thine only Son to be unto us both a sacrifice for sin and also 
an ensainple of godly life ; Give us grace that we may always 
most thankfully receive that His inestimable benefit.'' One and 
the same spirit breathes in the Creed ; restrains the philosopher 
in his speculations; chastens the poet in his imaginings; sighs 
before the Cross with the hymnist; takes the priest at the altar 
for its exponent. Theories of the How of the Atonement have 
occupied theologians in all ages. Ransom to Satan : partly to 
him, partly to God ; necessarily infinite victim for sin neces- 
sarily infinite as against an infinite God; the strong subtleties 
of Anselin's " Cui Deus Homo " ; the theories discussed so well 
by Baxter in his " Treatise on Imputation" — the mind fluctuates 
between one and the other. But they are mere opinions, and 
the Creed will commit itself to none of them. The symbol, the 
philosopher, the poet, the hymnist, the liturgist, each tells the 
truth and nothing but the truth, each refrains from entangling 
the divine fact with human speculations about the method of 
its effect. A Creed with such a theory would be a rationalized 
Creed, and would be shipwrecked in a voyage so long as that 
which the Church has to traverse. 

The passages which speak of the efficacy of the Death or 
Christ in procuring a change in our spiritual relation to God 
fall, I conceive, under three heads. Its aim and effect is (a) 



(Heb. ix. 12). In studying the words of the sacred writer here, there 
are two points to be noted. (1) The "latent sibi" of the Middle 
will = "the obtaining to himself as the issue of personal labor." 
(2) The conception of finding, so finely marked by Shakespeare's 
"found out.'''' The old commentators who breathed the same atmos- 
phere of thought and feeling have brought out the idea beautifully 
(e. g. /cat to evpufiEvoc uig irapd TrpoaSoKiav . . . atropov yap i\v to 
ttjc tXtvOtpictg rjjj.lv, aW uvtoq tips tovto. — Theophyl. arpoSpa tu>v 
diropwv r]v Kai tCjv napd TrpoaSoKiav irwg Sid fudg eiaoSov alwviai- 
XvrpwGiv s'vpaTO. — Chrysost.). The expression combines happiness of 
discovery with activity of research ; something of satisfaction to him- 
self with fulness of sain to us. 



26 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

expressed by prepositions ; or (6) it is shadowed forth in sacri- 
ficial language; or (c) it is illustrated by metaphors and anal- 
ogies. 

(«) 

The prepositional expression of the aim and effect of the 
Death of Christ is that which forms the solid rational basis of 
our concejjtion of it— so far as human reason can deal with it. 

Four prepositions are employed, Trepi, virip, dvri, did, the two 
first repeatedly and pervasively, the two last each in one place 
only. 

Let us see the force of these prepositions. 

(1) 7repi, originally, is almost synonymous with dp.<pi ; the 
latter denoting an imperfect, the former a perfect, circle (Don- 
aldson, " Gr. Gram." § 482). With the gen. Trepi signifies 
"around"; hence, "about, concerning, in relation to." (2) vnip 
was originally discriminated from Trepi (v-nip, irep-i) as "the 
apex of the compass from the circle described." "With the gen. 
this prepos. = over some object locally; then, as he who pro- 
tects stands or fights over the object of his good-will — overness 
being the natural attitude of protection— it passes into signi- 
fying "on behalf of." (3) dvri originally was " in the place 
which is opposite." Hence "instead of" becomes its usual 
meaning. But it was carried on to denote something which 
might literally be taken as an equivalent, or actually as an ex- 
change for the object (dvri rroXXSiv Xacov, "worth many of the 
common people " — Horn. II. ix. 116. dvri ttoWuv ^e^fcdrtoj/, " ex- 
changed for a large sum "— Demosth. Olynth. I. See Donaldson, 
"Gr. Gram." § 474). (4) Bid with the accusative indicates the 
ground (not exactly the aim), and implies "on account of, for 
the sake of" (Winer, " Gram, of N. T. Diction," sec. xlix. p. 417). 

It may safely be held that Trepi and virip retain their proper 
force in all passages of the N. T. where they are connected 
with the objective effect of Christ's death in relation to sinners. 
In all such instances irepi denotes the object with which the 
action is concerned, but virip adds the thought of a beneficial 
effect designed in the action; so that Trepi affirms that the ac- 
tion concerns the person, but virip that it concerns him for good. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 27 

(For iirep in reference to the effect of Christ's death to us, see 
Mark xiv. 14 ; Luke xxii. 19, 20 ; John vi. 51 ; x. 11, 15 ; xi. 50, 
51, 52; xvii. 19; Rom. v. 8 ; 1 Cor. xv. 3; Gal. i. 4; iii. 13; 
Eph. v. 2; Titus ii. 14; Heb. ii. 10 ; vii. 27; ix. 24; x. 12 ; 
1 Pet. ii. 21; 1 John iii. 16. To the vast extension of context 
add three great passages — "for me" individually, Gal. ii. 20; 
for those who might seem most incapable of receiving it, Rom. 
v. 6 ; 1 Pet. iii. 18). 

The two other prepositions, avri and 8id, are used, each once 
only in connection with Christ's death — dvri in the deeply 
solemn^saying Xvrpov dvri ttoKXcov, Matt. xx. 28 : Mark x. 45 
(cf. also 1 Tim. ii. 6). The notion of substitutive vicariousness 
may come in here, though that of equivalence only is necessarily 
implied. Aid also occurs but once in immediate connection 
with the effect of Christ's death — " The brother for whose sake 
[8i w] Christ died" (1 Cor. viii. 11). 

(&) 

The effects of Christ's death as regards our spiritual relation 
to God are largely described in sacrificial language. 

His death is nepi dpaprias, a sin offering (Rom. viii. 3 ; Heb. 
x. 6, 8 ; xiii. 11 ; 1 Pet. iii. 18 ; 1 John ii. 2; iv. 10). It is Bvaia 
(three times, Ephes. v. 2 ; Heb. ix. 26; x. 12) ; rpoa-cpopd (three 
times also, and in the same chapters, Ephes. v. 2 ; Heb. x. 10, 14). 

The effect is also represented as " a taking away of sins " 
(Heb. iv. 14); as a bearing of them up and on the Cross (John 
i. 29, 36 ; 1 Pet. ii. 14) ; as a propitiation (Rom. iii. 25 ; I John 
ii. 2; cf. Heb. ii. 17); but this word will be discussed more fully 
at the close. 

Of metaphors outside the sacrificial circle the principal are 
these. (1) Debt which requires cancelling and dimission — (d(pecr*s 
absolutely only Luke iv. 18 ; Heb. ix. 22 ; with " sins " and freq.) 
See also the cancelling of debt under the two images of expung- 
ing the letters of the tablet and striking a nail through it (Col. 
ii. 14). (2) Purchase is connected both with the last image and in 
common estimation with that which follows (dyopd^iv, dtjayopd- 
£eiv, 1 Cor. vi. 20 ; vii. 21 ; Gal. iii. 13 ; iv. 3 ; Apoc. v. 9 ; xiv. 3). 



28 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

(3) A. whole family of words of redemption pass into the X. T. 
from the LXX. (Xvrpov, Xvrpovadai, XvTpaxris, XvTpa>TT)s, ci7roXv- 
Tpaats). None of thesu redemption words, however, are in the 
Joannic group of writings. They will be found in Matt. xx. 28; 
Mark x. 45 ; Luke xxiv. 21 : 1 Peter i. 28? Luke i. G8 ; ii. 38; 
Heb. ix. 12; Acts vii. 35. Deliverance by the special means of 
ransom paid seems to cling to these words in some degree (at 
least to many minds). (4) The tender conception of reconcili- 
ation of alienated and sinful humanity to God finds its place. 
(KaraXXayrj, KaTaXXciara-eiv. Rom. v. 11;* 2 Cor. v. 18, 19; Rom. 
v. 10; 2 Cor. v. 18,19,20.) 

The conclusion which I venture to draw from this is one 
which bears directly upon this Discussion. If we suppose the 
N. T. to be an exceptional book, divinely moulded, then its 
utterances on the momentous subject of the effect of the Death 
of the Incarnate Son of God have a general purpose and ten- 
dency worthy of careful consideration. 

(«) 

The prepositional redemption language leads us naturally to 
those firm lines which are the definite boundaries of human 
conceptions upon this subject, viz., that the Death of Jesus 
concerns us by establishing a real relation to us (nepl) ; that it 
concerns us beneficially, protectively, advantageously {inrip); 
that its effect is some mysterious equivalence or exchange for 
us (avTi); that the very ground of it is one of tender love, that 
it was endured for man's dear sake (8id). 

(&) 

But man may need something more than this vast outline 
map of Divine benevolence, something more richly colored, 
more passionate and pathetic, to illustrate the mystery of 
heavenly love, and this is supplied in the N. T. 

First, and perhaps chiefly, by a free use of sacrificial lan- 
guage and conceptions. 



* The only place where the word "atonement" (= at-onement) occurs 
in the A. V. of the New Testament; in the R. V., " the reconciliation." 



PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 29 

But in arguing from this language, we are to beware of two 
serious errors. 

1. We are to remember what manner of sacrifice that of the 
Cross is. 

" The doctrine of the Ep. to the Hebrews " (writes Bishop 
Butler) " plainly is that the legal sacrifices were allusions to the 
great and final atonement to be made by the blood of Christ, 
and not that this was an allusion to those " (" Analogy," Part 
II. chap. v.). Now, the relations of these two things have long 
been unfortunately inverted among us. The great willing sac- 
rifice foreknown before the foundation of the world is generally 
called so as if it were merely allusive to the legal sin-offerings; 
as if they were the very, the real and true sacrifices, and not 
merely imperfect images and analogies of the great and true self- 
oblation (Keble, " Studia Sacra," p. 36). And so, in dealing with 
the sacrificial terms applied in the N. T. to the Death of Christ, 
men not only press metaphors to death with a barbarous liter- 
ality; they lower the higher sacrifice by insisting that it shall 
reproduce all the particular circumstances and ideas of the 
lower sacrifices. 

2. Besides this, in trying to construe to their reason the mode 
in wdiich the effects of the Death of Jesus become operative, 
many take what they consider to be the divine and dominant 
idea, and press it to conclusions with a fatal fidelity to a mis- 
taken logic. 

The Sacrifice of Calvary is in fact an offering, a propitiation, 
a reconcilement or atonement, the remission of a debt, a price 
paid, a ransom from oppressive bondage. But we may make 
sad mistakes in pushing what we consider to be necessary and 
logical deductions without ascertaining that our primary prop- 
osition is rightly put together. We should see to it that we 
are not importing into the term in our major proposition some- 
thing which has become utterly alien to it. Take, for instance, 
the proposition, " Christ's Death is a ransom.'" To many minds 
the dominant idea is, and has been, that of a payment received 
by the power from which the captive is emancipated. But the 
idea falls to the ground with a truer mastery of the spirit of 



30 PRIMARY COXYICTIONS 

Scripture in its real significance. The "whole terminology of the 
redemption language came from the deliverance out of Egypt 
(See the convincing pages 295, 296 of "Westcott's " Ep. to He- 
brews.'') How God paid a price to the Egyptians fur the free- 
dom of His people to redeem them out of their bondage, is a 
question which no one could reverently or even rationally ask.* 
Surely it is little more rational to inquire — " to whom was the 
ransom paid when man was redeemed by Christ ?" The chain 
of misapplied logic falls with the snapping of its first link. 
The difficulty vanishes with the disappearance of the limited 
conception contained in the word originally, but removed from 
it into a different field by the history of the chosen people. 
The problem supposed to arise is connected with the notion of 
some actual and literal payment; but, that notion having been 
charmed out of the word by another of a higher grace and 
power, we are troubling ourselves about that which has ceased 
to exist. 

My conclusion, then — and it bears most directly upon the 
subject of the Discussion — is, that we are to hold by the con- 
viction that "God gave to us His Son to be unto us not only 
an example of "godly life," but also "a sacrifice for sin." In 
that death there is a something of mysterious and unspeakably 



* No doubt the word Xvrpov is used of a literal ransom of life (Ex. 
xxi. 30), of the price of redemption of a captive, slave, etc. (Is. xlv. 13 ; 
Lev. xiv. 28). But the verb came to be employed specially of the 
" redemption" from Egypt (Xvrpwuoyai vpag Iv (iea-^iovt vTprjKtji, k.t.X., 
Exod. vi. 6 ; xv. 13, etc.; Ps. lxvi. 16 ; Mic. vi. 4) ; and of the greater fut- 
ure redemption of which that was only a shadow (Is. xxxv. 9 ; xli. 14; 
xliii. 1-14. tie Qavarov Xvrpwaoyai abroiic, Hos. xiii. 14). Thus the 
thought of a ransom paid to and received by a power or person as con- 
sideration for the release of a captive is practically dropped from the 
word. The conception of redemption is painted in the historical color 
of Israel's release. "The deliverance from Egypt furnished the im- 
agery of hope." The idea that redemption cost much, had in it some- 
thing of Divine selt-saci-ijice, may underlie the term. But there is no 
thought of any power exacting a necessary ransom. 



PBDIABY CONVICTIONS 31 

beneficial efficacy as regards man's relation to God. Christ 
rendered repentance of efficacy by what He did and suffered 
for us — "put us into a capacity of heaven." "And it is our 
wisdom thankfully to accept the benefit by performing the con- 
ditions upon which it is offered, on our part, without disputing 
7iow it was procured on His" (Butler, "Analogy," Part II. 
chaps, v. vi.). 

At no time in the history of the Church have Unitarian prin- 
ciples seemed more likely to fall in with the current ideas of 
any age than at present. Our security is not in misapplied 
logic, nor in prolonged torture of metaphors. It is in the 
Divinity and Incarnation of the Son of God ; in the grand, 
broad, simple, prepositional theology of the Atonement in the 
Nicene Creed ; * not in false, metaphysical commentaries upon 
misunderstood Scriptural expressions. Be it ours to hold the 
different aspects of Christ's work of redemption as expressed 
in the glowing words of a saint of old, " He is victim, He is 
sacrifice, He is priest, He is altar, He is God, He is man, He is 
High-priest, He is lamb, having become all in all on our be- 
half, that life might come to us every way."t Be it ours to 
pray, in the deep and simple spirit of the noblest collect which 
thoughtful faith ever breathed at the foot of the Cross — 

" Almighty God, who hast given Thine only Son to be unto 
us both a sacrifice for sin, and also an ensample of godly life ; 
Give us grace that we may always most thankfully receive that 
His inestimable benefit, and also daily endeavor ourselves to fol- 
low the blessed steps of His most holy life : through the same 
Jesus Christ our Lord." 

"We must now recur to the word rendered propitiation. 

This word is rare in N. T. — the verb twice (Luke xviii. 13 ; 
Heb. ii. 17) ; the subst. twice (1 John ii. 2 ; iv. 10). Cf. iKaarr^pLov 



* T6i> di r}}ia.Q rovg avOpwnovQ, icai cia ttjv ypeTEpav aioTripiav KdTt\- 
Qovra . . . icai ffapKuiQevra . . . /cat evav9pio—i)oavra, aravpojOevTa Ss 
vTTip r)puJv (" Symbol. Nicoaenum," Constantinop.). 

t Epiphan. "Haer.," Iv. §4, 471. 



32 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

of the mercy-seat— once literally (Ileb. ix. 5) ; once metaphor- 
ically (Rom. iii. 2j). 

It is to be remembered that (a) the idea of atonement ex- 
pressed by this term in N. T. is, so far as language and con- 
struction arc concerned, subjective; but (fi) that an objective atone- 
ment is below and around it. 

(a) 

The subjective atonement is expressed in it. 

1. It is important to contrast the classical construction of the 
verb with that in the N. T. In Homer IXdo-Keo-Oat. is always used 
of gods,with an accus. of the deity propitiated (II. i. 147, 386.472, 
etc.); hence, later it denotes conciliating any one, or disavow- 
ing adverse feeling {IXdaiceo-dai ttjv opyrjv. — Plut. Cato. Mi. 61). 

But in Ileb. ii. 17 it is not used of God, but of our sins. 

2. The tense of the verb (IXdcrKeadai ras dfxaprias r. Xaov) 
speaks not of the one past and finished sacrifice, but of the 
continuing effect of the Intercession = " to win continually the 
forgiveness of their sins." 

3. As regards the subst. iXaap.6s, that word passes into N. T., 
not only technically, from the region of sacrifice (= 152 nxarj i. 
but from the tender psychological and evangelical firT^O 
(translated IXaapos by LXX., Ps. lxxx. 4; Dan. ix. 9). Thus, 
the word practically means making to disappear, charming it 
away (" Neutralizing it," "Westcott, " Epp. of St. John," 85). 

@) 

But I venture to think that it is going beyond the wise atti- 
tude of reserve imposed upon us by our incapacity to affirm the 
mode in which the Atonement took effect, if we assert absolutely 
that the propitiation acts only and exclusively on that in us 
which alienates God, and not in any sense at all on God, whose 
love is unchanged throughout. 

1. Our Lord represents a true penitent as uttering the in- 
stinctive cry of our alienated humanity when it begins to feel 
God's wrath as well as love {IXdaBrjTi poi t5> dfiapraXta, " God be 
propitiated to me the sinner." — May, R. V., Luke xviii. 13). 

2. The argument given in outline for God's unchangeable- 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 33 

ness seems precarious and dangerous. Spinoza took bis starting- 
point from God's infinity. He argued : 

Personality = consciousness ; consciousness = limitation. 

Limitation annihilates infinity. 

.-. God is not personal. 

The answer is that Spinoza's infinity is a mere mensurative 
infinity ; that the attributes of the living God are not swallowed 
up in that. There is, I apprehend, much danger of God's un- 
changeableness being pressed to an analogous error. Abelard (in 
a recoil from ultra-logical arguments) ; the Socinian schools and 
modern rationalism ; some eminent scholars, who are neither 
rationalist nor Socinian, shocked by popular language and 
theories, argue from this principle. But God's unchangedbleness 
thus used would reduce God to an impalpable impersonal un- 
conditioned. If He is too high to be changed, in any sense, by 
an atoning sacrifice, He is too high to be grieved by sin or 
touched by love, as grief and love involve change. There is no 
reason why atonement should not have been " a reconciliation 
accomplished not only on earth, but in heaven ; not only in the 
hearts of men, but in the heart of God." (See the remarkable 
argument in Bishop Martenseu, " Christian Dogmatics," § 156, 
Obs.) 

After all fair deductions there is enough in the conceptions 
of propitiation, redemption, and sacrifice to make us pause be- 
fore absolutely evolving an objective atonement for a subjec- 
tive reconciliation. Indeed, to affirm that the psychological 
effect of the exquisite pathos and love of the self-sacrifice of 
Calvary is the whole of the " one perfect and sufficient sacri- 
fice, oblation, and satisfaction," is tantamount to saying that 
we do know how, and precisely how, it takes effect. 



It may be well to point out how one great contemporary 
theologian solemnly asserts that the Nicene formula came to 
him neither as a novelty nor a surprise. St. Hilary says : 

"TestorDominum . . . me cum neutrum audisse semper tarnen 
utrumque sensisse quod per homaeusion et homoousion oporteret 

3 



34 PBIMABY CONVICTIONS 

intellige . . . Regeneratus et in episcopatu aliquantisper manena 
fid cm. Nicaenam nusquam nisi exsilaturus audiri ; sed mihi 
Tiomusii ct homaeusii intelligentiam evangelia et apostoli inti- 
maverunt" (St. Hilar. Pictav. '-De Syn. adv. Arian." Edit. 
Erasm. f. 1523). 

The whole picture of Hilary's soul is dramatic and interest- 
ing-, though its author has little of the passionate charm of St. 
Augustine. Providence had given him opulence and leisure. 
He became a thinker and student. The superstitions of the 
vulgar were too material, the speculations of philosophers too 
thin and vaporous, for a heart enamoured at once of the spirit- 
ual and of the real. He fell in at first with the Old Testament 
Scripture, which chastened and elevated his conceptions to the 
great " I x\m." Convinced of the infinitude and beauty of 
God, he rested for a while in the sweet security of the fair re- 
treat of a sentiment so noble.* The assurance of personal im- 
mortality, and of the necessity of personal holiness, followed. 
Such a God would not call such a being into existence under 
the condition of defect of life and eternity of extinction.! 
Finally, the knowledge and study of St. John completed the 
Creed of St. Hilary. What natural feeling and reason or the 
Old Testament had taught him about God, he learned to apply 
to the Only Begotten God. His faith did not relax itself into 
a plurality of gods, nor cut away God from God in a diversity 
of nature, when it learned to believe in God from God.}: 



* "In secessu quodam et spelunca pulcherrimae hujus sententiae 
animus requiescebat." 

f " Sub defectione vivendi et aeternitate monendi." 
t " Non in deos fidem laxans, qua Deum ex Deo audit ; non ad na- 
turae diversitatem Deum ex Deo decidens" (St. Hilar. Pictav. u De 
Trim," I. ff. 1-7. Edit. Graem). 



IDiscussion til 



Delivered in substance in the Church of the Heavenly Rest, Thursday, 
March 17th, 1892 



'We will grieve not, rather find 
Strength in what remains behind; 
In the faith that looks through death, 
In years that bring the philosophic mind," 



FIRST PRIMARY CONVICTION 
" I believe in God the Father Almighty." 

" In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." 
—Gen. i. 1. 

Belief in God the Father Almighty is the pre- 
amble of all religion in any true sense of the word. 
This momentous belief Genesis does not prove, but 
presupposes. 

Considering the part which the Old Testament 
has played in creating and propagating Theism, 
and the degree to which the Church through her 
Master is committed to Genesis, some discussion of 
certain leading principles in the narrative of Genesis 
is certainly connected with the evidences of Chris- 
tianity. 

It is frequently asked why the Church still vent- 
ures to read the first three chapters of Genesis ? 

I make no attempt to reconcile Genesis and sci- 
ence. Were the task possible at present, I am not 
the man who could venture upon it. I am rendered 
less dissatisfied with my incompetency by observing 
that those who profess to do so are generally ignor- 
ant either of Genesis or of science, or of both. 
Moreover, it does not require much knowledge of 
Hebrew to feel sure that a revelation of science 



3 a PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

could not be made in that language. I adopt the 
weighty words of the Duke < >f A rgyll : " The meaning 
of the words of Moses is ahead of all science, not be- 
cause it anticipates the results of science, but because 
it is independent of them and runs as it were round 
the outer margin of all possible discovery." 

Much in the old narrative must ever remain 
obscure. High above all towers God and Creation. 
Evolution has played a great part in moulding things 
into their present shape. But " the origin of species 
by natural selection " is an illogical mode of expres- 
sion. How can there be selection before there are 
species to select from ? 

\Ye shall examine two points only, the position of 
man, and the moral account of his trial and fall. 

I 

We consider the position of man (1) according to 
science, and (2) according to the Bible. 

1. The position of man according to science is as 
exceptional as it is pre-eminent. 

Natural selection implies that all life is a struggle 
for existence ; the best equipped physically wins the 
day ; and the Aveakest inevitably goes to the wall, 
and is at last crushed against it or thrown over into 
the abyss. 

This being so, we have one unparalleled phenom- 
enon to account for. 

Man, who is at the summit and rules over all other 
forms of life, has manifold peculiarities, some useless, 
some positively injurious, in the great prolonged 
struggle ; and each of those peculiarities is prophetic. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 39 

(a) Brain and thought are no doubt connected. 
Kot that brains secrete thought as livers secrete 
bile. The connection is of simultaneousness, of two 
thiugs in concordance indeed ; not, however, related 
as cause and effect, but as the instrument and the 
agent which employs it. And the skulls of the ear- 
liest date tell of an amplitude of brain. There is 
about them the possibility of a majestic power. 
Such instruments of thought are prophetic of Homer 
and Plato, of Shakespeare and Kewton.* (b) The 
skin of man is another witness. In no case is the 
back furnished with hair in the position necessary 
to guard against wet and its perilous consequences to 
life and health. The want is a peril and a disad- 
vantage in the battle of life. It is a prophecy of the 
civilizing and elevating processes which clothe man 
sufficiently and beautifully, f (c) The voice of man 
is not merely expressive of sensual desire, of pain, or 
fury. The throat becomes a noble and flexible in- 
strument which is capable of swelling like an organ ; 
which accompanies music ; which extends over a 
compass of notes with which the birds can make no 
comparison ; which can pass through crowded assem- 



* " The brain is an organization prepared in advance."— 
Wallace. 

t " "When man," writes an ingenious Helsingford professor, 
"had invented the art of making fire, and when the idea of 
covering himself to secure protection from cold had occurred to 
his mind, hairlessness was no serious disadvantage in the strug- 
gle for existence" ( "Westermarck, "History of Human Mar- 
riage''). Quite so. But how lefore the fortunate idea tumbled 
into his mind, lefore he invented fire or learned to make clothes ? 



40 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

blies, and charm, elevate, convince. It is prophetic 
of music, of parliaments, of theatres, of churches, 
of worship. (//) The brute creation have features 
which are a heavy mask, or wear a savage grin. 
Their faces have not the flexile play which renders 
possible a smile, that tender light and silent music 
of a human face, the prophecy of subtler qualities 
and sweeter emotions than are known to the brute 
creation — wit, and undying affection, and a melan- 
choly that is akin to joy and hope, (e) The human 
hand is not only capable of a firm grasp and touch ; 
by means of the thumb it forms a kind of natural 
compass, and leads us on to the circle, and with the 
circle to the severe and sublime truths of geometry.* 
(f) Add to this the gifts which are bestowed upon 
the elect of humanity ; which appear with a mys- 
terious capriciousness that defies our analysis.f A 
little one is born who has the magic inheritance 
of genius, for which little or nothing in hereditary 
predisposition seems to have prepared. The musi- 
cian produces the piece which seems to fill the world 
with infinite resonance. The poet expresses some 
thought which is the heritage of all with perfection 
unknown before ; clothes it with splendid language, 
sets it quivering with emotion, associates it with 
delightful images ; makes it radiant with a smile or 
baptizes it with a tear. From stupid progenitors 



* See Note A at the end of this Discussion. 

| "All these splendid endowments have not been developed 
under the law of natural selection" (Wallace, "Darwinism/' 
pp. 4G8, 469). 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 41 

there comes the mathematician,* who, pursuing, as it 
seems, abstract truth with a severe precision, grad- 
ually prepares the triumphant procession of science 
through earth and sky. The philosopher sounds the 
depths of oar marvellous nature, and teaches us 
what we are capable of knowing. These qualities 
and gifts are of no direct use in the struggle for 
life. They are prophetic of human progress, of 
higher spheres where the suspended studies of this 
short life may find indefinite ranges of possible 
advance. \ (a) Yet another prophecy. What we call 
nature is so prodigal in life, so exuberant in crea- 
tion, an ascending hierarchy of which we can never 
say that we touch the highest. And hence we 
gather the probability, the certainty of infinite 
resources of life and being in the universe, not visi- 
ble as yet to us or to our race, except at special 
moments to gifted individuals. And the ladder of 
life rises and towers from earth to heaven, and the 
angels of God ascend and descend, and we cry out, 
" How dreadful is this place !" X It is not merely 



* " If man's physical structure has been developed from an 
animal form by natural selection, it does not follow that his 
mental nature lias been developed by the same causes only" 
(Wallace, " Darwinism," p. 463). 

f " The law of continuity is absolute through the realms of 
matter, force, soul, and mind. There is a chasm between man 
and the highest mind " (Wallace, " Natural Selection," p. 205). 

\ Of the fact that Intelligence guided the development of 
humanity we have a shadow and analogical instance among 
the achievements of the only intelligence known to us. Who 
can deny that intelligence has been at work in breeding the 



42 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

meant for investigating the beneficent drudgery of 
earth-worms, for dissecting dogs or bottling beetles. 
" This is none other but the house of God, and this 
is the gate of heaven." And we " call the name of 
the place Mahanaim— hosts." And we lift up our 
voice as if we stood before the altar, and say, 
" Therefore with angels and archangels and with all 
the company of heaven we laud and magnify thy 
glorious name !" And then we learn a rational con- 
fidence in our mental capacities properly conducted, 
not at all inconsistent with an equally rational hu- 
mility. He was a great man and an original thinker 
who asked, " How far can I trust the conclusions of 
a monkey's mind ?" But if the frame be that of a 
monkey, the mind is not the mind of a monkey. 
Towards the end of the first chapter of Genesis, God 
is represented as communing with another Self in 
the depths of His own eternal Being. " Let us make 
man in our image after our likeness." The senten- 
tious brevity of the style of Moses swells out into a 
nobler music and into an ampler volume — "And 
God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be 
fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and 
subdue it : and have dominion." The hero of so 
many conquests cannot be merely a successful bully, 
feared abroad, cowering and trembling at home over 



dray-horse or race-horse, the bull or pheasant ; in perfecting 
the rose or tulip ? (The orchid is one of the few flowers which 
nature produces in its most consummate forms.) No one thinks 
in these cases of postulating that outrage upon common-sense 
and lotnc, " unconscious intellm-ence." 



PRIMARY C02TVICTT0XS 43 

his mendacious aspirations and impotent strength ; 
a blinded giant, a pretentious bundle of contradic- 
tions. His keen glance reads the stars of heaven ; 
and the firm tread of his advancing footsteps must 
be inspired by a wholesome confidence in the reality 
of the faculties of his mind. 

• Let us look at another point, the creation of 
woman. A woman has to be accounted for as well 
as a man. Somehow or another one man must have 
been produced. Either one must have been pro- 
duced before another, and a very considerable time 
before (for development must have brought man 
and woman to the same point at the same time), 
or else they must have been created simultaneously. 
If one was created before the other no life would 
have resulted. If they were brought into existence 
simultaneously, then the one was made for the other. 
The propelling or attractive sexual principle, to 
which myriads of living creatures submit, is an 
instance of Mind at work. There only remains a 
third supposition, that of a two-sexed creature. 

2. Now with this compare the narration of Moses. 
After all, happy as man's condition was, there was 
yet a want. The shadow of some yearning hung 
upon his brow. God himself — who had seen the 
ordered beauty of the contexture of His whole cre- 
ation — God who had said " it is good " and " it is 
very good," now for the first time uses a negative ; 
" it is not good that the man should be alone ; I 
will make her an help meet for him," " as over against 
him," so as to meet with him, to correspond with 
his wants. And then again the glory of man seems 



44 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

to fill the spirit of Moses. " The Lord God caused 
a deep sleep to fall upon Adam." ]STot the common 
sleep of wearied humanity. Something higher than 
that. The old Greek translation has it "an ecsta- 
sy." It was a prophetic sleep. "And the Lord 
God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam ; and 
he took one of the ribs, and closed up the flesh 
instead thereof; and the rib which the Lord God 
had taken from the man builded he into a woman." 
Like some architect before whom the ideal of a fair 
building has floated, until at last the time comes to 
pile it up visibly. And when Adam awakes his lan- 
guage swells first into a hymeneal, then into a proph- 
ecy. All the long, long history of human affection ; 
all that mystery of love which impels men, genera- 
tion after generation, to leave the old home and 
build a new one ; all that sweetens sorrow in a wom- 
an standing by us to tell us even by pathetic silence 
of the eternal home where the last sob of anguish is 
exchanged for the great deep swelling of the angels' 
songs ; all that cleaving of heart to heart without 
which marriage is a profanation (for marriage with- 
out love is the cause of love without marriage) ; all 
this is in the words, " therefore shall a man leave 
his father and mother, and cleave to his wife ; and 
they shall be one flesh." The young soul who be- 
lieves this is helped in choosing between the true 
love which makes the weak man strong, and the 
false love which makes the strong man weak. 

Thus science accentuates the exceptional position 
of man in the world ; exceptional to the universal 
law that the best fitted physically to environment 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 45 

wins the best place in the struggle for life. And 
the narrative of Genesis, apart from all the objec- 
tions of a minute criticism, takes the same broad 
and lofty view.* 

II 

To the narrative of Genesis it is objected from 
the moral side that our first parents were tried at 
all; that they were tried by a temptation so trivial ; 
that they were tried by aspiring to the knowledge 
of good and evil. 

1. It is objected that they are represented as hav- 
ing been tried at all. 

But it has been shown by a great master of moral 
thought that the possibility of a creature endued 
with all finite perfection failing under trial is de- 
ducible from the very nature of particular affections 
or " propensions." Those " propensions " might be 
necessary in the condition for which the beings were 
intended. But such "propensions" must ex hyj?o- 
thesi be felt when the object was present not only to 
the. senses, but even to the thoughts. "The case 
would be as if we were to suppose a straight path 
marked out for a person, in which such a degree of 
attention would keep him steady ; but if he would 
not attend in this degree, any one of a thousand ob- 
jects catching his eye must lead him out of it." 

2. But, it is urged, the subject-matter of the trial 
was trifling. 

Now, if we assume that our first parents were to 



* See note, p. 57. 



40 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

be tempted, how could such a temptation have come ? 
Assuredly they could not have been tempted to 
Atheism in Eden. The subject-matter of the trial 
of such beings must have been within the circle of 
things intrinsically indifferent, must necessarily have 
appeared to be of an arbitrary character. There is 
no reason for supposing that the fruit of the tree 
was physically noxious and poisonous ; indeed, all 
the evidence is to the contrary. The prohibition 
was not like that of a father who should point to 
certain bright, tempting poison-berries that hung 
upon a tree in his avenue or garden, and should say 
to his children, " You must not taste of those berries ; 
you will die in agony if you do." God's dealing 
with Adam and Eve resembled that of a good and 
gentle parent, who, wishing to discipline his chil- 
dren and teach them obedience, might say, " That 
fruit is tempting. There it hangs and it is most 
inviting. But I forbid you to taste it. You must 
trust me. I cannot at present give } T ou any other 
reason than this— that I, who love you so truly and 
whom you ought to trust, forbid you to do so, and 
know that you will suffer if you do." 

There are many who smile or sneer at the idea of 
temptation insinuating itself through a thing so 
insignificant as the fruit of a tree. But if you be- 
lieve that the present order of the world is, on the 
whole, a moral order, that men are moral beings, 
and- that there is a God who allows them to be tried 
by temptation, I can put to you a case which seems 
to be exactly parallel. There are some members of 
the human family whose peculiar form of tempta- 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 47 

tion is drink. Thirty years ago I was called upon 
to come and see a dying officer. "When I entered 
his lodgings and passed into the little room where 
he lay, his wife sobbing over him, I saw bottles of 
porter and whiskey piled all round. The case was 
too clear. An honorable career, a bright record of 
services (he had been in the trenches before Sebas- 
topol), a fair wife, a little child, a happy home, a 
life still in the prime of splendid manhood — all were 
as nothing in the presence of that small ignoble 
temptation. He was its victim now, and others — 
innocent of all part in it — were to suffer. And there 
he lay, screaming about devils that grinned, and 
scorpions that were swarming along the sheets to 
sting him. Is there such a wide difference essen- 
tially between the temptation of such unhappy peo- 
ple in the nineteenth century and the old-world 
temptation? You may laugh at Genesis as much 
as you think it decent to do. But it seems to me 
that the whole difference is that God said in one 
case to Adam, "In the day that thou eatest thereof 
thou shalt surely die " ; Avhilst He is saying to thou- 
sands now, " In the day that thou drlnkest thereof 
thou shalt surely die." 

3. There were two trees in the Garden. "We may 
conclude that in the tree of life there was a natural 
means of sustaining natural life (and probably also 
a sacramental means of grace). From the act of 
tasting the other tree there would result a premature- 
(and therefore unwholesome and perilous) familiar- 
ity with the knowledge of good and evil. 

" ' Familiarity with good ' — how can that possibly 



48 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

be baneful to any son or daughter of man?'' And 
this brings us to a third objection to the moral part 
of the narrative of creation. 

Now, it is not merely that knowledge of moral 
and spiritual truth may be a barren knowledge. 
By the constitution of our nature the moral and 
spiritual knowledge which only speculates and ad- 
mires without being translated into moral and spir- 
itual .action is positively injurious to the best inter- 
ests of the soul. " Going over the theory of virtue 
in one's thoughts," writes our great moralist and 
divine, Bishop Butler, " talking well, and drawing 
fine pictures of it ; this is so far from necessarily or 
certainly conducing to form a habit of it in him 
who thus employs himself, that it may harden the 
heart in a contrary course, and gradually render it 
more insensible, i. e. form a habit of insensibility 
to all moral considerations." * An eminent states- 
man has supplied part of the explanation : " Hypoc- 
risy delights in the most sublime speculations ; for, 
never intending to go beyond speculation, it costs 
nothing to have it magnificent." The dramatic 
satirist, and one of our most popular English novel- 
ists, have each represented consummate scoundrels 
as accompanying their vilest actions with high-sound- 
ing abstract moral propositions; and we feel that 
there was a time for Joseph Surface or for Mr. 



. . . "Those 
"Who dabbling in the fount of Active tears 
Divorce the Feeling from his mate — the Deed." 

— Tennyson, "The Brook." 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 49 

Pecksniff when the grand abstraction was really 
admirable, and the delicate sentiment not destitute 
of a refined sweetness. It is intelligible, then, that 
a mere speculative knowledge of moral and religious 
good may have been calculated to work illimitable 
evil to those who disobeyed God by acquiring it for 
themselves. 

If this be so, how much more truly is it the case 
with a knowledge of moral evil ! People speak of 
temptation and ruin, by means of a tree of knowl- 
edge of good and evil, as a myth and an unreason- 
able one, but does it not recur again and again in 
the history of souls ? "What is the history of many 
young men? Satan comes (no doubt not now in a 
serpent's form) and speaks to the heart, branding 
with contemptuous sarcasms the sacred ignorance 
which makes the sunshine round the head of child- 
hood ripple into a softer gold. He comes and whis- 
pers to you that the knowledge of evil is pleasant, 
that it is an eye-opener. " Put out your hand. Take 
of the fruit. Partake of the knowledge of evil. 
Evil from a relative point of view is good in mak- 
ing. You will be emancipated, } 7 ou will smash the 
nursery and its infantine enjoyments by your first 
contact with the delights of sin. The shackles of 
old superstitions Avill fall from your disfranchised 
limbs, and you will be made free. The childish 
ignorance will be changed. First of all you will 
become men ; nay, your manhood shall grow royal ; 
you shall be as gods knowing good and evil." And 
then, what a wicked novelist has called " the curios- 
ity of the senses " knocks at the gate of desire ; your 
4 



50 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

blood is on fire to taste for the first time the fierce 
delirious cup, whose scented wine bubbles and breaks 
against the lips, but leaves the headache and the 
heartache after the bitter and burning lees. You 
walk out in the summer twilight ; you are charmed 
by the face of evil, so beautiful under the gaslight 
of passion, so wan and haggard, so wizened and 
blasted, when the first pale light of God's dawn 
streams in upon the disenchanted soul. You have 
tasted of the sin that has light in its eye and honey 
upon its lip, and the old story lives over again in 
you. Call it a myth or what you will, it is too 
fiercely true. It is renewed with every generation. 
The eyes open ; the burning shame ; the pleasure 
never to return ; the remorse never to pass away ; 
the aversion from God ; the alienation which draws 
clouds over the heaven of the soul. "And they 
knew that they were naked ; and they heard the 
voice of the Lord God, walking in the garden in the 
cool of the day ; and Adam and his wife hid them- 
selves from the presence of the Lord God among 
the trees of the garden." The knowing look upon 
a young face ; the expression of evil intelligence 
upon those who have been made partakers of the 
sacrament of sin ; the imagination and recollection, 
like fetid oil, bubbling and oozing up again and yet 
again from below the soil of the soul ; the disin- 
clination to be alone with our conscience and with 
our God — consider this, and then from your sci- 
ence of comparative religion, or from the calm su- 
periority which your knowledge of the law of evo- 
lution gives you to the unscientific conception of 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 51 

momentary creation, laugh, until your sides split. 
But tell me honestly whether, as even I have drawn 
the picture, you did not a few minutes ago start a 
little, as you recognized the family likeness to Adam 
when he hid himself from the presence of the Lord 
God among the trees of the Garden ? 

It seems to me that in the moral account of the 
Creation and Fall of Man we cannot reject the nar- 
rative in Genesis, at least not because our first par- 
ents were tried; or because they were tried by 
eating ; or because a knowledge of good is stated to 
have been one of the consequences of their act of 
disobedience which brought evil to them. 

Ill 

With two observations we conclude. 

1. If we would be fair to the unrivalled excellence 
of the record which gives us the surest, though cer- 
tainly not the only, ground for the primary convic- 
tion of all religion (" I believe in God the Father 
Almighty "), we may find it in turning to classical 
literature. 

There are few things more striking than the in- 
feriority of the religions of Greece and Rome. 
Their art and literature are like some rare vintage, 
of which the connoisseur pronounces that it combines 
the fire of youth with the mellowness of age. Theirs 
is the splendor of genius and the precision of indus- 
try. They try the echoes of time with unpractised 
voices, and waken the most perfect music. Their 
first essays are radiant masterpieces ; all the suns 
of all the summers never light a more consummate 



52 PKniAET CONVICTIONS 

form. In your new society over the great ocean 
you sit at the feet of the children of the Attic sum- 
mer ; you imbibe the lofty idealism of Plato, the mas- 
terly utilitarianism of Aristotle ; Lowell learns how 
to point his epigram and prove his verse. Now place 
the religion and the literature of these gifted races 
side by side. On the one hand, we have measure, 
justice, calmness, a glorious good-sense, a perfect 
balance of judgment. On the other side — that of 
religion — there is nothing to satisfy a mind that 
thinks, much less a soul that yearns after God. 

2. Something more and higher. 

The amount of conviction is not in proportion to 
the mass of credenda you can bolt. A big belief is 
not necessarily a great belief, nor a long creed a 
strong one, any more than a long man is necessa- 
rily a strong man. Every honest monk who hangs 
about the Vatican believes more than St. John. He 
has a bigger creed than that of Nicaea ; but he does 
not believe so truly or so grandly. He has a hyper- 
trophy of dogma, a plethoric and wheezy spiritual 
constitution. But he has not the elastic strength 
and bounding vigor of Primary Convictions. 

And how do these Primary Convictions come to 
occupy the soul? Not altogether by arguments, 
however valid ; not altogether even by rational ac- 
quiescence in the spiritual essence of the Creation 
narrative of Genesis. 

There are two ways to truth. One is purely ra- 
tional ; you either descend from principles to con- 
sequences, or ascend from consequences to axioms. 
The other way is intuitive., illuminative, by the di- 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 53 

rect action of truth upon the soul. We cannot say- 
how, but the result is real. 

You are alone and in low spirits. A shadow falls 
upon your heart. Perhaps you are in bed. No wire 
flashes the news, no dingy piece of paper is put into 
your hands with the curt news. But you know that 
something is wrong with friend or child. How do 
you know it ? 

You meet some one for the first time, man or 
woman. You know nothing of past antecedents. 
But somehow soul speaks to soul. There is the 
friend of your life, there the wife whose withered 
hand you hold sixty years after. You might have 
made inquiries or chopped logic for the half -cen- 
tury, and you would never have known what that 
flashing moment gave you. 

And what of the intuitions of genius? You are 
at work upon your statue ; your ideal is misty and 
confused ; your clay is stiff and reluctant ; you are 
sad and heavy. But suddenly light grows upon 
you, and the ideal is rendered in shape. Or you 
lean your elbow upon your desk, and almost give up 
your poem. No melody haunts you ; the line is 
nerveless and rings with no immortal resonance. 
Cold and wearied you go to rest. But suddenly 
the idea shapes itself ; as you see and hear, you are 
pushed on by a splendid aspiration, and the lines 
are seen and heard full of marvellous music, sweet 
in the silver starlight. There is about them the 
march of a triumph, the pathos of tender tears ; 
they are great enough to sweep across humanity ; 
they are as strong as death, as sweet as love, as 



54 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

fierce as passion, as deep as sorrow. Beyond in- 
ductive or deductive reason (but not independent of 
it) there is an intuitive knowledge of the True, the 
Beautiful, the Good. We know not in full how the 
illumination comes, but come it does in life again 
and again. 

Apply this to religion ; and we have the written 
experience of a most powerful and original mind.* 
He writes to tell a friend how he had been led to 
give up a brilliant career, and choose a poor and de- 
spised monastery. " It is a sublime moment, that 
when the last ray of light penetrates into the soul, 
and links to a common centre the truths which it 
has already, but in a scattered form. There is al- 
ways such a distance between the moment which 
follows and that which precedes it, between that 
which was before and that which came after, that 
the word grace has been found to express this stroke 
of magic, this flash from on high. I seem to see a 
man who walks with uncertainty, a bandage over 
his eyes ; it is loosened by little and little — and the 
instant when the handkerchief falls, he finds himself 
in face of the sun !" And as all your logic will never 
give you a wife or a poem or a picture, so it will 
never give you something higher. There is 

"A deep below the deep, 

And a height above the height. 
Our hearing is not hearing, 
Our seeins; is not sight." 



* " Lettres du P. P. Lacordaire," pp. 5, 57. Lacordaire, " 18nie 
Conference de Notre Dame de Paris," II. pp. 315, 316. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 55 

The bandage must fall from our eyes before we 
find ourselves in the face of God, before we can say, 
" My opinion has passed into conviction. I have 
• heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear ; but now 
mine eye seeth Thee." * 

May I be allowed to close this Discussion with a 
personal recollection ? 

On board a great Atlantic steamer it happened 
to me one Sunday evening in the library to take 
down and read a certain chapter in Darwin's " De- 
scent of Man." f Back through aeons inconceivable 
we are drawn to the lancelet or amphioxus — a 
thing almost a worm, with scarcely a brain or rudi- 
ment of a vertebral column, a tough breathing-sac 
with two orifices, a marine hermaphrodite. From 
this creature there are two lines of family stem ; 
the one moving up to the vertebrate, the second 
down to the ascidian. These humble things are 
our aquatic progenitors. Our origin was on some 
shore washed by tides, and our lungs are modified 
from swim-bladders. 

I retired to rest, almost dismayed. The majestic 
industry, the massive patience, the colossal induc- 
tion was not to be gainsaid. But as I lay awake in 
my cabin, I heard presently the burst of an organ, 
and voices went out over the starlit sea in chants 
and hymns. The vast ship was rushing along twen- 
ty miles an hour, and I could see through the little 
window of the port-hole the water cut into white 
swaths of foam. What words were those \ " Lead, 



Job xlii. 5. t Part I. chap. vi. pp. 127-199. 



56 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

kindly Light !" " There is a green hill far away." 
Then I felt that the question is not what man may 
have been, but what he is ; not what he is like, but 
what he can do; not what organisms may have been 
employed in moulding his body, but what they have 
become. I determined not to sadden the souls of 
those who think with narrow interpretations. The 
being Avho triumphs over the waves, who raises 
strains pervaded by " thoughts whose very sweetness 
giveth proof that they were born for immortality," 
may come from the humble amphioxus — or from 
something lower still, "the dust of the ground." 
But he is the child of God by nature and made for 
a yet higher sonship. " Because ye are sons God 
hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our 
hearts, crying, Abba, Father." Then the first ar- 
ticle of the Creed will no longer be an qpi?iion, but 
a conviction. 






NOTE 



It is advisable to take notice of the so-called Jehovistic and 
Elohistic elements in the three narratives of Genesis concerning 
Creation. 

All through the first section the sacred Name is rendered in 
our version God-Elobim, implying law and power, God's eter- 
nal force and Godhead. But all through the second section He 
is called in our translation " Lord," or " Lord God," Jehovah or 
" Jehovah Elohim." This implies more than power, force, law, 
" stream of tendency "; not only the personal, eternal God, but 
the living and loving God, who enters into communion with 
His people. The two names are thus used with exquisite ap- 
propriateness. 

In one section we are told that " God (Elohim) created man 
in His own image "; because in that first section we have an 
account of Creation rather from a physical point of view ; and 
man, even though made in the image of God, is mainly looked 
upon as the highest point of Creation, the apex and crown of 
animated Nature. But in the next section we read that " the 
Lord formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into 
his nostrils the breath of life " ; because God enters into com- 
munion with the lowly yet sublime being whom He has made — 
with man, moulded indeed from lower elements, but having a 
higher life than any of the brute creation. And thus we may 
observe how the sacred Names are used — not at random, not as 
part of an incoherent whole, not as fragments feebly glued to- 
gether, not as mere signs or algebraic formulae — to find in the 
record of the temptation one of the subtlest lessons in Holy 
Scripture. How speaks the tempter when he comes to the 



58 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

woman ? Does he tempt her to throw away all faith in God — 
to turn atheist — in the Garden of Eden ? Satan is too wise for 
that. He begins, " Yea, hath God said " — (God, Elohim) — " ye 
shall not eat of every tree in the garden?" He does but try to 
make her fall back uj^on the colder and less personal Name, and 
his craft succeeds. The woman follows his guidance, and the 
beginning of the fill may, perhaps, be traced in the choice of 
her words: "Of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of 
the garden, God hath said" — (Elohim hath said) — "ye shall not 
eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die." 

Now let it be granted that the use of these two names may 
possibly indicate two different sources, and indicate (what no 
Christian has the slightest interest in denying) that the author 
of the Pentateuch sometimes compiles and incorporates or 
transcribes documents. An eminent German historian cries, 
" Heaven preserve us from Ueber-kritik !" How truly this is the 
case with this Elohistic and Jehovistic theory, carried to ex- 
cess, made an implement for unsettling the date of every book 
in the Old Testament and for postulating two different and 
even hostile gods, a very simple analogy from the New Testa- 
ment may indicate. 

Take the two names of our Lord, Jesus and Christ. Those 
two names have a distinct and separate meaning. Turn to the 
Epistle to the Hebrews. The human name, Jesus, occurs nine 
times, and (as is shown by the- most accurate of commentators) 
" in every case it furnishes the key to the argument of the pas- 
sage where it is found.* The name Christ occurs also nine 
times, in one form almost as a proper name, in another officially. 
The compound name (or rather the associated names) is rarely 
found. Similarly we have here in Genesis Elohim, Jehovah, 
and Jehovah Elohim, used with distinctive shades of meaning, 
not of course with such unquestionable precision as Jesus, 
Christ, and Jesus Christ, in the Epistle to the Hebrews. 

And surely, on the authority of the most honest and capable 
critics themselves, the difficulties which beset the toto-com/pila- 



Bishop Westcott on " The Epistle to the Hebrews," pp. 33-35. 



PKEVIAKY CONVICTIONS 59 

tion or pudding-stone hypothesis are at least as grave as those to 
be encountered by the older school. " It is true " (writes a 
great and candid scholar) "that Elohim and Jehovah represent 
the Divine Nature under different aspects as the God of nature 
and the God of revelation respectively; but it is only in a com- 
paratively small number of instances that the distinction can be 
applied without great artificiality to explain variations between 
the two names in the Pentateuch." But of the three great 
sources of the pudding-stone formation theory (J., E., and J. E.) 
what is admitted ? The compiler, it is postulated, sometimes 
employs one original entirely; sometimes dissects his authori- 
ties, and carves scraps from a second or third into that which 
he adopts as a whole. Sometimes he constructs the entire 
story of the three in about equal proportions. In the details 
of J. E. the criteria are " quite undecisive," * and " capable of the 
most widely divergent interpretation.' 1 '' J. and E. have much in 
common, and stylistic criticism alone would generally be cprite 
unable to distinguish them. Is there not at least equal "arti- 
ficiality" in this theory ?t 

But to return. 

Let us carry our analogy of the names of our Lord in the New 
Testament a little further. 

That there is in certain Churches, and in certain schools of 
every Church, a difference in the relative frequency of their uses 
of the names of our Lord, is indubitable. More tender and 
emotional natures love to reiterate the personal name Jesus; 
it is to them literally as ointment poured forth. It is their light 



* Professor Driver, elsewhere, however, cites one instance. " The 
absolute use of Elohim is characteristic of P. and E. The term qualified 
by genitive or possessive pronoun is quite freely used by J. The per- 
sonal name, Jehovah, does not admit of being so qualified." When a 
scholar so profound and subtle can apparently find no other instance 
(and places it in his volume only as an after-thought), he must feel that 
his materials are intractable indeed (" Introduction to the Lit. of the 
0. T.," Addenda, xxiv.). 

f Idem, pp. 8-12 ; also pp. 118-150 on the question of style. 



60 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

and honey and music. More reserved and placid natures prob- 
ably prefer Christ. Now, if we suppose all Christian literature 
between Apostolic days and our own to have perished, with 
the exception of a very few tracts and fragmentary historical 
chapters, what degree of truth would there be in a conjectural 
reconstruction of the history and doctrine of the Christian 
Church on this principle ? Suppose two of the chief surviving 
fragments to be a brief summary of the history of the Order of 
Jesus, written from a Jesuit point of view, and a tract entitled 
"Are you a Christian?" containing fierce denunciations of the 
order. Might not a professor of comparative religion in the 
year a.d. 4092 reason to this effect : " The happy discovery of 
these two precious documents throws a flood of light upon the 
ages unscientifically called Christian. It is evident that there 
were two religions, founded upon different conceptions of so- 
teriology. Sometimes, especially at first, they were in absolute 
discord; for a long period they co-existed side by side; occa- 
sionally we find them conglomerated. There is confusion and 
obscurity, we admit. The safest general rule is simply to count 
the number of times in which each name occurs, and thus dis- 
cover whether the writer was a Jesuit or a Christian. One 
thing is certain, that to suppose the two names belong to one 
subject, and employed with a subtle reference to the subject- 
matter of the writer, is to place one's self outside the region 
of serious criticism. The existence of two religions, fierce- 
ly hostile to each other, in the early days of what used to 
be incorrectly called Christendom is now a fact acquired by 
Science." * 



* It is of some interest to note that the book of Genesis has been 
published in German in a very neat form, with the "sources" (J., E., 
J. E., P. quat.) typographically distinguished. (By Kantzech and Socin.) 
The text, it is modestly remarked, notes only "relative probability." 
About fifty years since Ewald printed the first Gospel in five different 
types ; Hengelfeldt afterwards made it two, Kostlein and Schenkel three. 
It would be interesting to know what these scholars would think of 
their own work — if they could look over it now ! 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 131 

I refer with deep pleasure to "Old Testament Criticism" (a 
paper reprinted from The Friends' Quarterly Beview, especially 
pp. 24-28), where the reader will find this, and a great deal 
more, much better said by the historian whose grave and mas- 
sive style so unfalteringly sustains the burden of his learning 
through the four volumes of "Italy and her Invaders" — my 
honored friend, Thomas Hodgkin, D.C.L. 



discussion HHH 

Delivered in substance in the Church of the Heavenly Rest, Sunday, 
March 20th, 1892 



" Putamus . . . incredibile dici aliquid, cum dicitur Verbum 
Dei ... sic assumpsisse corpus ex virgine, ut iminortalitatem 
suam non corruperit, ut aeternitatern non mutaverit, ut pote- 
stateui uon rninuerit, ut administrationem ruundi non deserue- 
rit, ut a siuu Patris . . . non recesserit ! . . . Non metuendum 
est corpusculum infantiae, ne in illo tantas Deus angustias 
passus esse videatur. Neque enim mole sed virtute magnus 
est Deus. . . . 

" Demus Deum aliquid posse, quod nos fateamur investigare 
non posse. In talibus rebus tota ratio facti est potentia faci- 
entis. 
edit. Mio-ue. 



SECOND PRIMARY CONVICTION 

"I believe in Jesus Christ, -who was conceived by the Holy 
Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary." 

'•The angel said unto her, , . . that holy thing which shall 
be born of thee.' 1 — Luke i. 35. 

It has been said that the Incarnation of Jesus 
Christ is " unproved and unprovable." If the word 
proof be taken in the strictest logical sense, this is 
true. But there is another kind of proof which ad- 
dresses itself to the moral nature. There are prop- 
ositions in contingent subject-matter which are 
certainly not more proved than propositions in nec- 
essary subject-matter, but which are, so to say, better 
proved, because supported by proofs which, as Plato 
said, " are smiled at by your clever kind of people, 
but reverenced by the wise," who know that man 
has other faculties than those which are logical and 
mensurative. 

I propose (I.) to state the doctrine of the Incarna- 
tion in language as untechnical and informal as I 
can make it, and (II.) to advert to those converging 
indications of its truth which reconcile in us the 
faculties that think with those that feel and pray. 

I 

The Incarnation, then, stated in unscholastic lan- 
5 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 



guage, is this : According to the will of the Father, 
by the operation of the Holy Ghost, God the Word 
assumed human nature by a birth in time. It was 
a true human birth, with conception, formation, 
bringing forth. It was a true human bodily organ- 
ization, compacted of flesh, nerves, bones ; with a 
true human soul. This involved a will, with its 
processes of deliberate choice ; a mind, which in it- 
self was not omniscient, but acquired knowledge by 
information,* learning, experience ; with human de- 
sires for meat, drink, rest ; with real sinless emotions, 
such as love, pain, anger, grief, pity, wonder. 

Let us here, as elsewhere, indicate what the Incar- 
nation was not. 

1. The Incarnation was not the conversion of the 
Godhead into a human personality. The Godhead 
is the seat of the Personality of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. 

2. The so-called incarnations of heathen religions 
are in no true sense anticipations of, or parallel with, 
the Incarnation of our Lord. They are fantastic 
masquerades of gods in search of an excitement, 
temporary and unessential ; gods " come down in 
the likeness of men." Or else a certain amount of 
divine influence is granted to some favored child. 
As time goes on the child becomes a man, and wins 
his way to godship. " Ardent virtue promotes him 
to heaven." Our Incarnation is not man deified ; 
it is God humanified ! 



* Matt. iv. 12. 



PEniAET CONVICTIONS C7 

II 

I proceed to point out those converging indica- 
tions which render this mystery worthy of belief. 

1. If, then, the New Testament be true, and if 
Christ be an entirely exceptional man, it will not 
seem unreasonable that He should have had an ex- 
ceptional origin. 

And here one branch of modern science — pecul- 
iarly modern — comes to the aid of belief. 

The influence of the physical antecedents of pro- 
genitors upon individuals has been established by 
later science with almost terrible evidence. Each 
infant which appears among us may, no doubt, still 
as truly as ever be addressed, 

" Thou whose exterior semblance doth belie 
Thy soul's immensity." 

Our faith may still be as firm as ever that 

"... trailing clouds of glory do we come 
From God, who is our home." 

In presence of the little stranger we may still say 
with the old father of the Church, "Kespect the 
hand of God yet fresh upon His work." * 

But the immensity of the soul has been strongly 
cramped and cabined. There are strange stains and 
flecks of matter that spot those lustrous clouds; 



* "In osculo infantis uuusquisque nostrum pro sua religione 
ipsas adhuc recentes Dei manus debeat cogitare." — "Concil. 
Carthag. sub Cyprian.," cap. iii. Routh, "Rel.," iii. p. 100. 



OS PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

other hands have marked and marred the handi- 
work of God. Each infant receives blood and 
humors specialized and manufactured in a family 
mould, a body modified and built up by all which 
has preceded it in the flesh, good and bad — a tem- 
perament and predisposition ready made. Every 
child comes among us saturated and charged with 
these conditions.* 

Of this law of heredity some one has said that 
" it is the despair of morality " ; some one else, that 
it " demoralizes morality." At all events, it seems 
to rationalize the dogma of dogmas. Think of those 
words whose ethereal purity tells us that they came 
from the sphere in which the miracle of miracles 
was wrought — the crystal shrine under which the 
Incarnation rests. " The Holy Ghost shall come 
upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall over- 
shadow thee : therefore also that holy thing which 
shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of 
God." f 

A Christian philosopher, it has been said, was 
present in a company of men of science where ni} T s- 
teries of faith were discussed in no reverent spirit, 
but with caustic wit. When they proceeded to han- 
dle the Incarnation, the Christian's heart began to 
sink. But, to his great pleasure, all seemed to agree 
that, given a personal God, and given a gracious de- 
sire on His part towards the creatures whom He 
had made, it did seem probable that He would in- 
tervene by the creation of a new manhood, and that 



On the law of heredity see Note, p. 88. t Luke i. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 69 

the new manhood -would be summoned into exist- 
ence by a new contact with the creative power of 
God, without entanglement with the fatalities of 
human generation. 

A second scientific probability for the Incarnation 
is derived from the ascensional law of intervening 
force. 

At four stages in the history of this world some 
new cause made itself apparent : in the earliest mat- 
ter; in the earliest vegetable cell; in the earliest 
beginnings of sensation and consciousness. "We have 
four beginnings of four kingdoms in regular ascen- 
sion — matter, vegetation, animality, self-conscious 
mind. All are mysterious ; each is miraculous to 
that which is beneath it. The organization and 
analogy to life of the vegetable * is miraculous to the 
rock ; the very insect is miraculous to the vegetable ; 
man is miraculous to the animal ; and Jesus is mi- 
raculous to man ! 

Thus the whole pyramid of existence is miracu- 
lous, and the Yirgin-born is the apex. God inter- 
vened in chaos for ordered matter; in matter for 
vegetation ; in vegetation for sentient being ; in sen- 



* In this view the lines (often charged with Pantheism) are 
deeply true : 

" Flower in the crannied wall, 
I pluck you out of the crannies ; 
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand. 
Little flower — but if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is." 



70 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

tient being for thought; - in thought for a sinless 
Humanity. 

How, in what form, of history, with what context- 
ure of fact, was the action of the Eternal Spirit 
manifested in the genesis of Jesus ? Of this only a 
few lines tell authentically, and chronicle the event 
which has renewed the face of the earth. "The 
Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of 
the Highest shall overshadow thee : therefore also 
that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be 
called the Son of God." f Here we see the dogma 
of the Incarnation in a crystal shrine. "We feel a 
divine enthusiasm tempered by an equally divine 
reserve. The light of a smile from heaven falls 
upon the thought of Time's consummate birth be- 
ing brought out from the labyrinth of the fatalities 
of heredity, from the infinite entanglement and ter- 
rible possibilities of latent gemmules. The words 
must have come from the sphere in which the mira- 
cle was conceived and wrought out. Histology 
grows sublime. It is thus that the purity of an 
angel' speaks to the purity of a virgin. 



* " Not raised forever and ever, 
But when their cycle is o'er, 
The valley, the voice, the peak, the star, 
Pass and are found no more. 

" The peak is high, and flushed 
At his highest with sunrise fire; 
The peak is high, and the star is high, 
And the thought of a man is higher." 

t Luke i. 35. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 71 

Thus the origin of the exceptional Man is of a 
piece with the ascensional march which science pro- 
claims in the world. The prophet speaks for man 
when he cries, " His name shall be called Miracle" - 

III 

" But is Jesus so entirely exceptional ?" 

1. He is the only man who was ever systematically 
predicted before He was born ; whose birth, teach- 
ing, character, life, death, after-glory, kingdom, were 
announced — putting the date of the greatest proph- 
ecies as late as criticism can claim — at least several 
hundred years before. His is the only life lived in 
all the generations which had such a dawn whiten- 
ing in the sky of history before it rose. 

2. Alone among holy men Jesus affirms that He is 
holy. Accepting the Gospels only in the most gen- 
eral sense as a true record, we come to this entirely 
exceptional fact — a perfectly holy Man who pro- 
claims that He is so. 

Consider here one law of the spiritual order, and 
the solitary exception to it. 

The law to which I refer is that the holiest men 
are ever most conscious of their own sinfulness. 

!No wonder. The artist paints, and the poet writes. 
Those who are content with their own productions 
may have dexterity in manipulation, or the facility 
in fluent rhyme which wins prize poems, or even 
places them among " the mob of gentlemen who 
write with ease " ; but they have not that restless 



Isa. ix. 6. 



72 PEIMAET CONVICTIONS 

yearning after an unattained ideal which is the heri- 
tage of genius. They are self-convicted of second- 
rate aspirations and an inferior aim. JSTo finer ether 
clothes their fields, no amplitudes of light. They 
do not see widely over that which Isaiah calls, in 
his royal style, " the land of farnesses." * And so a 
self-satisfied man may possess a certain mechanical 
regularity of conduct. He may be a very respect- 
able Pharisee. But he has none of that sublime 
dissatisfaction with self which is the peculiarity of 
the saints of the Church. 

To this law there is one solitary exception. 

Jesus, as we know, had the witness of his enemies. 
The Jews, Pilate, Judas, at least attest His inno- 
cence. He has a witness harder to gain, that of 
friends. Every very considerable man at least is 
having materials for his life written as with a pen 
of iron that never blunts, with an ink that never 
fades, with a curiosity that never falters. He is 
watched by unsuspected eyes and reported by. un- 
expected hands. But Christ's disciples had been 
with Him in all circumstances of familiarity. They 
had tenanted the same narrow chamber ; they had 
rocked in the same little boat. They had partaken 
of the same rough fare, and walked under the same 
burning sun. They had felt the spray of the same 
storm, and looked upon the flowers of the same 
fields. One hasty word, one questionable look, one 
act of selfishness, one overheard murmur in a dream, 
would have caused the light to fade from His face 



Isa. xxxiii. 17. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 73 

and the diadem to fall starless from His brow. Yet 
He walks by their side, at once gentler than a woman, 
and yet with a something about Him which makes 
rash familiarity impossible. For all their love and 
confidence, they approach Him reverently, as if He 
stood upon the steps of a throne and were sur- 
rounded by chamberlains.* And, writing long years 
after, His nearest intimate can say, " We beheld His 
glory, the glory as of the only Begotten from the 
Father." f But high and far above all He has His 
own witness. True with a perfect truth, conscious 
how his nights and days were spent, He can say, 
" As the living Father hath sent Me, so I live by the 
Father." £ We have one long soliloquy of His soul 
with God ; but we have no utterance of conscious 
sin, no half-sigh of confession. In the last moments 
of existence, with the light of eternity breaking 
round Him, He can look up and say, " I have fin- 
ished the work which Thou gavest Me to do." His 
language leaves no doubt that He cannot include 
Himself among sinners. 

When, then, He who spoke the Sermon on the 
Mount tells us that He lived it, we are already in 
possession of a unique fact. We may chop logic 
about miracles as much as we like. We are in pres- 
ence of a miracle. 

"What think ye of Christ?" We think that He 
is unique and without parallel : and conclude .that 
the origin of His earthly existence may have been 
unique and without parallel also. 



John iv. 27 ; xii. 21, 22 ; xiii. 24. t John i. 14. \ &• vi. 57- 



74 PEIMARY CONVICTIONS 

3. In yet another respect Christ is exceptional 
among men. After death, unseen as He is, He reigns 
over hearts by love. 

Think first of man's relations generally to human 
love after death. It is, indeed, an afflictingly un- 
wholesome subject to discuss too long or too mi- 
nutely. 

Take a delineation of one master of human nature, 
certainly not upon its finer and nobler side. Turn 
to Swift's direct and cynical portraiture, etched as 
if with corrosive acid ; yet not without some strange 
pathos underlying its bitter humor. Read it on its 
right key, and you find yourself listening to one 
who pirouettes and grimaces that you may not ob- 
serve the tears in his eyes. He is tired of the sub- 
jects in which he has too often revelled. He will 
no longer aim at carving out tumors in alabaster, or 
enshrining filth in the crystal case of that transpar- 
ent style. In his verses upon his own death he 

" shifts the scene to represent 
How those he loves his death lament." 

With exquisite subtlety he discriminates the rel- 
ative depths of his friends' natures. One would 
bewail him a week, one a month, one a day. 

" The rest will give a shrug arid sigh, 
' 'Tis pity ; but we all must die.' " 

The place we can occupy in a subjective immortality 
is circumscribed indeed. Forgetfulness grows over 
us like the grass. We are less to the living than 
the shadow of the tree which falls upon the snow 
on our graves. A repressive will may, indeed, ham- 



PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS T5 

per a widow's freedom of action by its posthumous 
jealousy, but it does not add tenderness to her mem- 
ories of the departed. The whole thing is summed 
up in David's everlasting word — " I am clean forgot- 
ten as a dead man out of mind," out of the living 
heart of humankind. 

ISTow with this law of humanity contrast Christ 
after death. 

He is known to millions, loved where known. 
All sacrifices are made for Him. Martyrs die as 
freely as in the days of Ignatius and Polycarp. A 
poor Chinese who died two or three years ago, after 
being horribly tortured, was asked upon his death- 
bed whether "he was sorry for having chosen 
Christ ?" " Sorry — yes !" he said, " very sorry : be- 
cause I have been able to do so little for Him." In 
every land penitents open their soiled hearts to Him ; 
they love Him for the new purity He has bestowed 
upon them. The parents who have laid their chil- 
dren in the grave, the widows who have lost the 
husband of their youth, find a new object of affec- 
tion. Wrecked and ruined lives are begun anew, 
wounded and shattered hearts indemnify themselves 
out of a boundless treasure. Every minute of the 
day and night some dying man invokes Jesus with 
light upon his face. " They looked unto Him and 
were lightened." * There are critics who look upon 
the book of Canticles as a vaudeville. In examining 
the tomb of St. Bernard at Clairvaux in the present 



* T^, Ps. xxxiv. 5. (The words express the rapid glit- 
tering, the rush and rain of the stream of light.) 



76 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

century the explorers came upon a few poor bones 
and a little dust wrapped in yellow silk, with the 
still uneffaced letters which spelled out, " A bundle 
of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me ; He shall lie 
all night betwixt my breasts." * This is the only 
love-song of the only love which is stronger than 
death. 

This power of awakening, of perpetuating love, 
struck the great intellect of ISapoleon as the irresist- 
ible proof of Christ's abiding personality and Christ's 
divine influence. He spoke of his own misery ; of 
his impotence to secure the affections of more than 
a few ; of the certain cessation of that with his own 
life, in spite of the enormous power which he had 
wielded. " I am a judge of men," he cried, " and I 
tell you that Jesus was more than man !" 

The disciples, we know, were called Christians 
first at Antioch. And, no doubt, it is a solemn time 
when a new influence, a great thought, clothes itself 
with a formal name; for a name is the sign of an 
existence. It may have been that the word came 
from the Roman police, and was originally founded 
upon the inaccurate notion that Christus was a 
proper name. At all events, it was the name of 
one loved ten years after death, and the name will 
never die. 

Ko ear has ever heard that voice whose magnetic 
sweetness draws souls through the waves and the 
fires. There is no authentic likeness of His face or 
form. In the Good Shepherd smiling in the Cata- 



* Song of Sol. i. 13. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 77 

combs ; in the long- worn features of the Mosaic of 
the Lateran, in the crucifixes with rubied nails of 
the goldsmith bishop, St. Eloi of Limoges ; or the 
agonized form upon Alpine or Pyrenean height; 
among the pictures in the galleries of Europe — none 
has the slightest claim to be the very likeness of 
Jesus, the Son of Mary and the Son of God. But 
of the moral and spiritual likeness there can be no 
doubt, " Whom having not seen we love," is as 
true now as when St. Peter wrote. The love which 
is drawn out is a proof of the reality of the object. 
Yes, and the hate too. For Jesus is exceptional in 
this also. As He alone is regarded with love, so He 
alone is honored with hate, centuries after His visi- 
ble withdrawal from earth. He is ever the " sign 
which is spoken against." 

4. But, further, we should not fail to remark that 
the Incarnation, as a fact in human history, is told 
to us by an historian in whose prudence and sobriety 
we have every reason to feel confidence. It is not 
merely that he claims this for himself in the three 
sober and sensible adverbs at the outset of the third 
Gospel. His modest claim is justified by the treat- 
ise which he evidently regards as the second part 
of his work — the Acts of the Apostles. We find in 
it an evidently careful use not only of oral informa- 
tion, but of memoranda and documents. Now, his- 
torical accuracy is not a capricious and intermittent 
impulse. It is a fixed habit of mind, the result of a 
particular discipline. Historians of the school of 
the author of the Acts of the Apostles are not men 
to build a flamboyant portal of romance over the 



78 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

entrance to the austere temple of Truth. From 
what we learn of St. Luke in his later work we may 
be sure that he had authentic sources of information 
open to him, which cannot now be traced.* Brief 
memoirs of many incidents may well have existed 
in certain families or assemblies. As regards the 
" Bethlehem narrative, 11 we can scarcely doubt from 
what source the information was supplied. There 
is much which seems to reveal the head and heart of 
Mary. Mothers are the best biographers of their 
children. At all events we may be assured, from 
what we know of him, that St. Luke had authentic 
sources of information open to him ; and that as he 
used such documents for occasions of much less im- 
portance, so he did not neglect them for the record 
of the most momentous events in human history. 

It is, indeed, wonderful to notice the sobering and 
steady influence which in such an age kept the whole 
narrative of the sacred childhood well within the 
lines of ideal truth. A romance would have given 
us an obtrusively superhuman babyhood and boy- 
hood, thick-set with miracles and self-assertion. The 
holy Child would have been a dark and terrible 
little magician. The apocryphal Gospels are an in- 
structive object-lesson in the evidences of Christian- 
ity. A superhuman babyhood is an -zmhuman baby- 



* Consider the letter of Claudius Lysias ; the amplitude and 
the exact air of the speeches of Demetrius and of the town- 
clerk in the riot at Ephesus ; above all, the narrative of the 
voyage and shipwreck of St. Paul, with its accurate minuteness 
of observation. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 79 

hood. JSTothing but the honest simplicity of truth 
could have saved St. Luke from this. 

The canticles in the opening chapters form the 
most plausible objection. But the objection is alto- 
gether an appeal to ignorance of the character of 
Hebrew poetry. It is said that history is never idyl- 
lic sustainedly ; that the music which breathes round 
it may have a momentary pathos or romance, but 
never the sustained loveliness of a pastoral sym- 
phony. But, at all events, the fact that the canticles 
in the early chapters of St. Luke were improvised 
should produce no difficulty. For (a) as to their 
subject-matter. Take the hymn of Zacharias. That 
hymn, if inconceivable earlier than Zacharias, is 
more inconceivable later. Such a firm grasp upon 
salvation and redemption ; such a clear view of its 
character as consisting in " the remission of sins," 
yet such silence as to the mode and details, can only 
belong to the thin border-line of a period which was 
neither quite Jewish nor quite Christian. A little 
less, and it would be absolutely Jewish; a little more, 
and it would be absolutely Christian. (5) As to the 
form of these pieces, they were not composed under 
the difficult conditions either of classical or of mod- 
ern poetry, restricted hy quantity and rhyme, Po- 
etry is the impassioned rhetoric of the East. When 
the prophet is elevated by the glory or darkened by 
the terrors of the future, when his voice trembles 
with pathos or rises into indignation, his style spon- 
taneously assumes the form of Hebrew poetry. We 
are told that poetry is neither extemporaneous nor 
epidemic. Our poetry fortunately is not ; but our 



80 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

rhetoric (perhaps too frequently) is both one and 
the other. If there is too much blank verse abroad, 
there is more and blanker prose. In the case of the 
Gospel canticles, given a receptive and sensitive 
mind steeped in the style of the psalmists, and the 
awe mixed with rapture which must have been 
caused by such incidents if they really occurred, 
the production of such canticles becomes entirely 
credible in the case of pious Israelites deeply pene- 
trated by the sacred literature of their race. 

5. Finally, the end of the Gospel story throws 
back a light upon the narrative of its beginning. 

With a manly confidence in historical truth we 
may meet a criticism which sometimes affects the 
passionless precision of logic, and is sometimes tinct- 
ured with the airy colors of romance. 

The Resurrection is not a fraud. The despised 
apologetics of the last century have at least done 
this service, that they have blown this coarse and 
clumsy theory into space. The Resurrection is not 
a singular recovery of a lacerated and tortured man, 
awakened from a death-like swoon by the coolness 
of the rocky chamber or the pungency of the spices. 
We have to account for cowards turned into heroes, 
for the faith that overcame the world. The Gospels 
imply the lustre and beauty of a new life — a form 
with suffering lifted off until it seemed "other." 
A brow marked with thorns ; a frame cramped with 
agon}^ ; a lamed man ; a crawling spectre, skulking 
and whispering — could that have seemed the risen 
Lord, the Prince of Life ? Strange source of death- 
less joy ! strange spring for that full tide of which 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS SI 

each Easter is but one flashing ripple ! Nor, again, 
is the Eesurrection the projection of creative enthu- 
siasm. As the Church is too holy for a foundation of 
rottenness, so is she too real for a foundation of mist. 
In proportion as we feel assured that there are 
rational grounds for receiving the Eesurrection of 
Jesus Christ, we shall believe that a life with such 
an issue had a beginning so august.* 

IY 

I have, before I close, to advert to doubts of a 
different kind about the Incarnation. I mean, the 
doubts even in Christian minds — not about its truth, 
but about the perfect beauty and universal fitness 
of its sympathy. And here I suggest no abstract 
doubts, but interrogate the unformulated floating 
doubts in my own mind and in the minds of others. 

Let us have it out with these doubts. 

1. The deep, sweet thinker who wrote the Epistle 
to the Hebrews tells us that the sweetest fruit of 
the Incarnation is that it makes our High-priest 
capable of feeling with us and for us. " He took 
not on Him the nature of angels, but He took on 
Him the seed of Abraham. Wherefore in all things 
it behooved Him to be made like His brethren, for 
in that He himself hath suffered being tempted, He 
is able to succor them that are tempted." " We have 
not an High-priest which cannot be touched with 



* " Made of the seed of David according to the flesh ; and de- 
clared to be the sou of God with power, according to the spirit 
of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." — Rom. i. 8, 4. 



82 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

the feeling of our infirmities ; but was in all points 
tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us 
therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that 
we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in 
time of need." 

For all that, we think, He is different in experi- 
ence. 

Common trials are upon us, not uncommon temp- 
tations. The weariness of providing the means of 
life ; the corroding cares of wedded life ; anxieties 
about children whom we love better than ourselves ; 
the slow martyrdom of advancing years, and the 
painful preparations to the breaking up of the ma- 
chinery of the body — of all this the Son of Man, 
who lived for the common good of humanity, who 
formed no domestic ties, who died at the age of 
thirty-three, knew nothing. 

But surely it is well for us to see what this objec- 
tion really implies. What would we claim from the 
Saviour % Must He travel round, not only the great 
line, but every inch of the by-paths of every possi- 
ble form of experience ? If so, how many ages would 
be wanted, how many re-incarnations demanded? 
Not only must there be a Messiah with the softer 
fibre and more passionate griefs of women ; not only 
must every leading form of human' existence have 
its separate Christ; every nation must put in its 
claim. The pigmies of the African forest must have 
a tiny Messiah to work out a perfect righteousness 
under the strange conditions of that melancholy life. 

In one life we have the primordial germs and con- 
stitutive elements of a truly human life. He who 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 83 

wept over the grave of Lazarus, who comforted the 
widow of ISTain, needed not to be a parent in order 
to feel with their sorrow. 

2. There are others who have an obstinate suspi- 
cion that Christ is different from them in nature. 
If the} r are pressed, they might probably reply some- 
thing to this effect ;, 

" We are perfectly aware that theology distinctly 
asserts that Christ's humanity is true human nature. 
She tells us that Christ is like us in all things. But 
she is careful to add — yet without sin. But the res- 
ervation is just my difficulty. For what is worst 
for me ? I will tell } T ou. The feeble purpose, the 
falling aspiration, the wreck of passion, the evil 
memories, the errors and sins. Think of Jesus on 
the Cross. All that you can say of the pathos and 
the beauty of it I can admit. Sinless indeed He is ! 
Never did the clock of time strike three such hours. 
Never did the earth reel and the heaven darken over 
such a martyr. Time has no second spectacle equal 
to that. I admit it. But I have listened. I have 
noted the seven last words that peal out — as if from 
the agony of God. I miss one thing with wonder, 
with adoration perhaps. All other religious men 
go into the presence of God with a cry for pardon. 
But He who dies upon the cross never sobs out, ' Fa- 
ther, forgive me !' Theology may be right in argu- 
ing from this to the highest holiness. The absence 
of all confession may imply a divine Humanity, but 
it is fatal to a human humanit}^. How can there be 
complete sympathy with a sinner like myself in this 
sinless paragon ?" 



84 PKIMARY CONVICTIONS 

The practical answer is this. If any of us were 
in anguish about sin, if we must tell out our burden 
or die, to whom should we go for the sympathy 
which would enable us to bear the load ? To some 
man of the world, who frames his standard by that 
code of honor which seems so lax, but which can 
be so fearfully unforgiving? To some woman of 
the world, with the exquisite polish of her finished 
contempt, a little of the sin, a great deal more of 
the repentance which is such a bore ? Not so. We 
should go to the holiest, purest, most Christ-like 
whom we could find ; because a sure instinct tells 
us that such a one is also the gentlest. Every step 
in purity involves a parallel step in pity. Purity 
and pity are two strings in perfect unison ; each 
vibration of one draws a response from the other. 
And by this law of the moral world, applied to the 
purest humanity, we are constrained to cry, " Thou 
who art perfectly sinless, upon whom temptation 
can no more leave a stain than the shadows of the 
sailing clouds upon the moonlit snow, purify me by 
Thy compassion. Take this weak will of mine and 
make it strong with Thy strength." 

3. But not only is it hinted that Christ is differ- 
ent in experience and different in nature. There are 
many imbued with the modern spirit who will say 
that He is different in class and character of endow- 
ments from us people of the nineteenth century. 
" On the philosophical and social problems which 
agitate men in Paris and Berlin, in London and New 
York, He seems to tell us little or nothing." 

Now this is deplorably unjust. Human society 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 85 

has been created by His words. His words are cre- 
ative still. Into their clear depths eighteen centu- 
ries have gazed down, and never yet seen the last of 
their meaning. 

But there is one word which covers a whole de- 
partment of human life. It is something for all of 
us ; it is all for some of us. The word is sin. The 
central point of His teaching is this — its nature, its 
pardon, the means of being freed from it. His very 
miracles indicate this. There is something more 
blighting than leprosy, more wasting than fever, 
more crippling than paralysis. His touch can heal 
disease ; but a line of light from His lifted ringer falls 
upon this as He says, " Son, be of good cheer ; thy 
sins be forgiven thee," or, " Go, and sin no more." 
There is one lofty name of a monarch with which 
the idea of greatness is incorporated forever ; with 
the name of our King salvation is incorporated as 
well as divinity. The Emmanuel idea is latent in 
the name Jesus. "Jesus, for He shall save His 
people from their sins." 

Is there any other with just that message to the 
sons of men ? Life is many-sided. I do not ask you 
to mutilate it. You aim at scientific training; } t ou 
want precision of thought ; your imagination is on 
fire with the fascination of literary beauty ; } t ou 
would win a name in politics ; you would pile up 
a colossal fortune. Science ! give yourselves to that 
cold and austere beauty. Precise reasoning! prac- 
tise your deductive logic, and analyze your reading 
and your thought. Literature ! study again and 
again those immortal pages on which the lights of 



86 PEIMAET CONVICTIONS 

a thousand summers have fallen arid revealed no 
flaw. Politics ! learn the art of raising popular pas- 
sions. Commerce ! get your tape-line, and learn the 
jargon of the Stock Exchange. In every case liv- 
ing contact with great masters is of the first impor- 
tance. I desire to avoid the too prevalent fashion 
of comparing our Lord as if He were a Mozart, a 
Newton, a Shakespeare of the spiritual world, " enor- 
mously clever " in it. But, if you want sin detected, 
pardoned, removed, I know no other. Do you ? 

On the whole, we have stated the doctrine of the 
Incarnation ; we have seen the converging lines of 
thought which give it probability. Scientifically, it 
meets and masters the requirements of the law of 
heredity, of the mysterious and inextinguishable life 
of latent gemmules ; it accords with the ascensional 
scale of the law of intervening force. Morally, it 
affords an exceptional origin for the exceptional 
Man ; exceptional in leading a systematically pre- 
dicted life ; exceptional in declaring Himself sinless ; 
exceptional in the feeling which He evokes centuries 
after His removal from earth ; exceptional in the 
historian whom His Incarnation has found; excep- 
tional in the issue of His life. 

Shortly after the great Civil War, a Southern 
general walked through Wall Street with a distin- 
guished American citizen. The general looked up 
at the vast lines of electric wires, and, pointing to 
them, exclaimed, " If our people had seen these, and 
realized the multiplied relations which they com- 
mand, we should have had no war." And if we re- 
alized the lines, apparently so fine, yet touching such 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 87 

varied worlds of power and interest, which the doc- 
trine of the Incarnation commands — the sympathies 
of Christ to man, and man to man ; the sacramental 
transmission of thoughts and gifts to us and ours — 
we should humbly and cheerfully bow before the 
mystery that commands such powers. 



NOTE 



"Heredity is that mysterious influence -which pre-ordains 
that the child shall be in the likeness of its parents. . . . 
But what is still more wonderful is the fact that these two 
germ-cells, these two microscopic masses of apparently homo- 
geneous protoplasm, will convey from parents to offspring the 
racial peculiarities of the parents, as length of limb, color of 
hair, cast of features. Nor does the marvellous stop even here, 
for these potent atoms almost invariably convey to the off- 
spring, as seen in the human family, such infinite, complex, 
and subtle similarities as trick of gait, tone of voice, longev- 
ity, liability to certain diseases and immunity against others, 
together with mental qualities, and even moral lent. ... As 
might be expected, many attempts have been made by sci- 
ence to explain this wonderful law which governs the growth 
and development of germ-cells, and enables them to convey 
not only the gross racial traits, but the most minute and subtle 
individual characters from parent to offspring; yet although 
some of the greatest minds of our age have wrestled with 
the subject, no one has broken the secret-house. . . . Notwith- 
standing the fact, however, that we cannot follow Nature in 
all her mysterious workings, our course is perfectly clear. We 
know that like produces like. . . . The hereditary transmis- 
sion of physical characters has been known from the earliest 
times of which we have any record, and man has benefited by 
this knowledge in the breeding of animals from time immemo- 
rial. ... As Dr. Benjamin Ward Richardson has wisely said, 
' the first step towards the reduction of disease is, beginning 
at the beginning, to provide for the health of the unborn. The 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 89 

error commonly entertained that marriageable men and women 
have nothing to consider except wealth, station, or social rela- 
tionship, demands correction. The offspring of marriage, the 
most precious of all fortunes, deserves, surely, as much fore- 
thought as is bestowed on the offspring of the lower animals." 1 

" If it were not so, if heredity were not in any way interfered 
with, the child must, of necessity, be a perfect mean of the 
parents, and all children of the same parents must be identi- 
cal. Now we know that this is not so. An exact likeness, | 
physical, mental, or moral, is never transmitted by inheritance ; 
such a thing is impossible. It has been said that no two blades 
of grass are exactly alike, and it is certain that no two faces, 
bodies, minds, or moral natures are exactly alike. . . . The 
slight variations constantly met with in the family are due, for 
the most part, to the various Mendings of the parental charac- 
ters, which a moment's consideration will show may be endless. 
Remnants of the countless characters of the ancestors are pres- 
ent in each parent, some strong, some weak, some standing out 
prominently, others almost effaced. Nor are they even thus a 
constant quantity, for while the life of the individual develops 
one, it may allow another to fade into oblivion. Thus the chil- 
dren begotten at different periods of life, even if they were ex- 
amples of the mean of the parents, must vary considerably. As 
it is, one child will inherit some peculiar character from one 
parent, in whom that particular character is just then promi- 
nent and active ; another child will inherit largely some other 
characteristic from the same or the other parent ; while a third 
may by some happy blending of perhaps mediocre parental 
characters become the fortunate inheritor of some physical or 
mental character of a higher order." — "Marriage and Disease," 
by Dr. Strahan. 

If the chemistry of inorganic things is identical through in- 
finite worlds in time and space, so the same chemistry rules, 
and has ruled, in the reign of living, creatures on our earth 
through all time. The same atoms and molecules, arranged 
and acting under ascertained laws, but in conditions other than 
those of things not living, combine to form the living beings — 



90 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

from the Amoeba to Man, from the Eozoon (if such there be) 
of the earliest days of earth, to the most recently develojiecl 
specimen of the human race. Maxwell lightly touches this 
wondrous theme : 

" Thus molecular science sets us face to face with physiolog- 
ical theories. It forbids the physiologist from imagining that 
structural details of infinitely small dimensions can furnish an 
explanation of the infinite variety which exists in the proper- 
ties and functions of the most minute organisms. 

" A microscopic germ is, we know, capable of development 
into a highly organized animal. Another germ, equally micro- 
scopic, becomes, when developed, an animal of a totally differ- 
ent kind. Do all the differences, infinite in number, which 
distinguish the one animal from the other, arise each from 
some difference in the structure of the respective germs ? 
Even if we admit this as possible, we shall be called upon by 
the advocates of Pangenesis to admit still greater marvels. 
For the microscopic germ, according to this theory, is no mere 
individual, hut a representative hody, containing members col- 
lected from every rank of the long-drawn ramification of the 
ancestral tree; the number of these members being sufficient 
not only to furnish the hereditary characteristics of every organ 
of the body, but to afford a stock of latent gemmules to be passed 
on in an inactive state from germ to germ, till at last the an- 
cestral peculiarity which it represents is revived in some remote 
descendant/' — " Science in Secondary Schools — Properties of 
Germs," pp. 25-28. By Sir H. W. Acland, Bart., M.D. 



Discussion TO 

Delivered in the Chapel of the Protestant Episcopal Theological 
School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, April, 1892 



" When the critic has done his best, 
The pearl of price, at reason's test, 
On the Professor's lecture-table 
Lies, dust and ashes levigable. . . . 
Earth breaks up, time drops away ; 
In flows Heaven with the new day.' 



THIRD PRIMARY CONVICTION 

" I believe that the third day He rose again." * 

A 

A Literary Proof of the Resurrection of 

Jesus Christ 

No one probably would now maintain that the 
style of the New Testament is, in itself, miracu- 
lous ; though every Christian believes that it is in 
no wise inconsistent with the grant of divine guid- 
ance to its writer. 

Still there are laws of style and literary form. 
There are laws of literature, because literature is a 
product of mind, and mind never works lawlessly. 
There are internal probabilities of language and 
manner from which veracity or falsehood may be 
inferred. There are what may be called literary 
impossibilities. That which Shakespeare has at- 
tempted and failed to do, that which a critic like 
Sir Walter Scott pronounces to be impossible, may 
fairly be considered beyond the reach of attain- 
ment by imaginative invention. 

I am not, I must repeat, about to argue that the 
style and literary adjuncts of St. Luke, in the narra- 



* Luke sxiv. 13-36. 



94 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

tive to which I direct your special attention, are — 
as. style and literature — miraculous and supernatu- 
ral. But I will ask you (I.) to consider the literary 
witness afforded by the passage to the historical 
truth and reality of the Resurrection and Ascension. 
(II.) I shall then speak of the character and blessed- 
ness of Christian conversation in social, and more 
especially in university, life. 

I. We find in this narrative a literary witness to 
the reality (1) of the Resurrection and (2) of the As- 
cension. Let us note three of its characteristics — 
of which the last is more important for our purpose. 

1. It is marked with dogmatic power in its ac- 
count of the exposition of the Old Testament by 
the Lord. More than any other this passage proba- 
bly has caused the Old Testament to be bound up 
in the same volume with the New. Those books 
of the Old Testament were not to be like an anchor 
found rusting on the shore, when the vessel which 
it held is spreading its sails upon the distant seas. 
Of all dead things a dead book is the most wretched. 
The exploded system of logic ; the superseded treat- 
ise on mathematics ; the volume of verse which 
has no music left ; the volume of speculation in the 
dead jargon of a forgotten terminology; the volume 
of history eclipsed by another which has struck its 
predecessor dead simply by its fatal charm or fatal 
completeness ; the volume of sermons between whose 
arid divisions no man sees the blue of heaven, or in 
whose falsetto pathos no soul catches a look of the 
infinite pity of Jesus! The Old Testament is no 
such book. If Ave walk with the two disciples we 



PEIMAKY CONVICTIONS 95 

shall not learn Christ from the Old Testament, but 
the Old Testament from Christ. We shall listen 
with boundless reverence, persuaded that ignor- 
ance can no more take away ignorance than sin- 
fulness can take away sin. 

2. A second characteristic of this section is pick 
uresqueness — not that diffused rhetorical pictu- 
resqueness which is the modern substitute for spir- 
ituality, but a concentrated picturesqueness ; a single 
occasional touch from a pencil-tip of deathless light. 
On the page of the " Phasclo " of Plato there falls one 
gleam of the " setting sun's pathetic light." Crito's 
exclamation makes us see the great broad rim still 
resting upon the hills, not yet quite lost to view.* 

Here also, in St. Luke, we are reminded by the 
disciples that "it is toward evening, and the day 
declined." f 

But there is more in this than mere picturesque- 
ness. The evening becomes a symbol of the dark- 
ness that is ever gathering round our human life ; 
of our yearning for one whose companionship is 
light. Let us take for our interpreter the young 
poet-priest who landed at Mce some forty or forty- 
five years ago. "When told by the physician that 
those blue waters and that land of sunshine had no 
life to give him, he went down into the cabin of his 
little yacht, and wrote the hjnnn so often sung at 
even-song wherever the English language is spoken, 



* 'AAA.' oifxai, eycoye, en rjXiov eivai enl rols opea-i Kai ovirco SeSu- 
Kivai.— Plat. "Phsed." Ixv. 

t irpos ecnrepav iari, Kai KinXmev 17 r)jx(pa. — Luke xxiv. 29. 



96 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

" Abide with me, fast falls the eventide." 

3. But we come, thirdly, to that characteristic 
which is vital for our present purpose, and which, 
after all that has been said upon the Resurrection, 
has been little noticed. 

The account in this passage of the demeanor and 
of the words of the Risen Jesus surely leads us to 
the conclusion which T am about to indicate. 

The Introductions prefixed by Sir Walter Scott 
to some of his novels are among the sanest and 
most instructive pieces of modern criticism. In the 
introduction to " The Monastery " Sir Walter Scott 
discusses the reasons for the comparative failure of 
"The Abbot." He attributes it in part to his de- 
lineation of the White Lady of A venal, and re- 
marks emphatically upon the almost certain break- 
down of "supernatural machinery" in works of 
fiction. He seems to make an exception in favor 
of Ariel—" that beautiful creation of Shakespeare's 
fancy" — and of other "astral" spirits. But those 
spirits to whom Scott refers are capricious beings, 
not of the highest order, alternately the tormentors 
and benefactors of our race. 'Now, Shakespeare 
has rarely represented great souls of the departed 
as uttering more than a few words. The impres- 
sion produced by their apparition is floated in to 
us through the language of the spectators rather 
than of the visitant. The presence of the Ghost in 
" Hamlet " is felt in the statelier march and more 
solemn music of the lines which are spoken by 
those under the spell. But the language of the 
Ghost himself falls, on the whole, far short of the 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 97 

lofty and awful conception conveyed by the words 
of others who impart to us the impression which 
the dramatist wishes us to form. 

Now, from this practical impossibility of repre- 
senting consecutively and consistently — without 
manifest failure — the doings and words of human 
spirits, elevated by death to superhuman greatness, 
the narrative of the Easter walk to Emmaus seems 
to lead us to one or other of two conclusions — 
Either (a) the little company of disciples contained 
a writer whose invention was such as to raise him 
to the level of perfect equality with the majestic 
conception of a Eisen God — so much at home with 
it that he fearlessly follows minute actions of this 
exalted being, and endows Him with sentence after 
sentence not unworthy of those divine lips. Shake- 
speare himself could not have moved on these lofty 
ranges of imaginative fiction without an occasional 
break-down, more especially as the joyous and tri- 
umphant freedom which is required for such high 
creations would have been fettered at every turn by 
the benumbing conviction that he was degrading his 
powers to the service of a lie. Or, if we reject this 
theory of an unparalleled power of invention, we 
are (b) forced to a second conclusion. In default 
of literar} T capacity for such invention, we fall back 
upon the judgment that this record contains the 
recollections of an eye-witness, whether that eye- 
witness were the evangelist himself, or some other 
who had written a document which St. Luke was 
enabled to incorporate, or whom he was in a posi- 
tion to question orally. 
7 



98 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

It seems very probable that St. Luke himself was 
the unnamed one of the two disciples. 

St. Luke could not, of course, have been one of 
the original seventy disciples. He clearly excludes 
himself from the number of those " which from the 
beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the 
word." Yet the ancient, wide-spread, and tena- 
cious tradition that he was a personal follower of 
Jesus must have had some foundation. And this 
may have been furnished by the narrative of the 
walk to Emmaus. 

There are two facts which point in the direction 
of St. Luke, one of which I briefly notice. 

Observe the evangelist's expression — " and the 
one of them whose name was Cleopas." 

Deep in the spirit of primitive Christianity was 
an instinct of quiet and reverential modesty en- 
tirely opposed to that self-advertisement which has 
become one of the most prominent features of mod- 
ern professional religionism. " It is good to be- 
come notorious in certain departments of Christian 
work." Here we have the principle of ecclesiastic 
selfishness in its categorical form. But here, as in 
ethics, the categorical form involves an epitactic 
meaning. If it is good to become notorious for a 
variety of reasons, some not absolutely unconnected 
with the present life, there is a voice which is con- 
stantly saying to the ambitious pilgrim towards 
honor and advancement, " My soul, take no ease 
to thyself for a while. Remember the three impera- 
tives — push, puff, advertise !" 

Now the evangelists, on the other hand, obscure, 



PKIMAKY CONVICTIONS 99 

almost annihilate themselves. They go into no 
ecstasies, they make few reflections, they remem- 
ber, or they recall the recollections of others. They 
are occupied entirely with their hero. The tide is 
too full for sound or foam. The more nearly they 
can become anonymous the better pleased they 
seem to be. 

If, however, we are not to find St. Luke here, we 
conclude that the evangelist either incorporated a 
document or wrote from the oral account of an eye- 
witness. In either case the narrative is a remark- 
able literary attestation to the Kesurrection of our 
Lord. 

There is another point on which we should dwell 
as a part of the literary evidence for the reality of 
the death and Resurrection of Jesus — the unity of 
essential principle in the narratives of the Resur- 
rection as to the impression produced upon the first 
witnesses of it. That impression was one of joy. 
Let us (1) grasp the fact, and (2) see what follows 
from it. 

1. The impression produced upon the disciples 
was one of joy. There was indeed a momentary 
terror, such as alwa} T s fills the boldest who believe 
that they are brought into contact with a visitant 
from another world. " They were terrified and af- 
frighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit." 
" They were afraid." But then joy rose in their 
hearts. " While yet they believed not for joy." 
" Then were the disciples glad when they saw the 
Lord." 

Yes! And each face wore that smile forever. 



100 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

For most human beings the one smile of perfect joy 
is the smile sometimes seen upon the face of death. 
There are some lines of Byron's which in the last 
generation were among the best known in our lan- 
guage. They were, indeed (as is so often the case 
with Byron's poetry), marred by some intermixture 
of inferior work, by a something falsetto, unreal, 
occasionally even vulgar. Yet the conception is so 
true, and part of the expression is so " inevitable," 
that there are lines in the composition which must 
forever keep their place in the poetry of Death : 

" He •who hath bent him o'er the dead 
Ere the first day of death is fled, 
Ere yet decay's effacing fingers 
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers, 
And marked the mild angelic air, 
The rapture of repose that's there, 
Some moments — aye, one treacherous hour— 
He still might doubt the tyrant's power. 
So fair, so calm, so softly sealed, 
The first, last look by death revealed." 

When we so gaze at our holy dead, over all that 
stillness, under all that coldness as of snow or of 
marble, what are those radiances? What is the 
meaning ? It is " long disquiet merged in rest " ; it 
is the wonder of a great discovery ; it is love which 
has long yearned after, and at last found, its object. 
And this meeting of lights, in human language 
without a name, is joy in the new language which 
Jesus brought with Him from heaven to earth. 

Some of that light remained on the faces of all 
who saw Jesus after His Resurrection. And it 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 101 

never altogether passed away. " I will see you 
again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy 
no man taketh from you." 

2. We have grasped the fact of this joy in the 
sight of the Risen Lord. 

Let us see what follows from it. 

Every effect has a cause. This joy had a cause. 
What does it imply about the Jesus whom they now 
looked upon ? 

A form with the heaviness lifted off, so that it 
seemed radiant and elastic. " He appeared in an- 
other [in a different form] unto two of them, as they 
walked, and went into the country," says the second 
evangelist, in a passage which I must hold for gen- 
uine. For no gospel of the Resurrection ever ended 
with that shuddering " they were afraid." The Res- 
urrection was a conquest, and no history of a con- 
quest closes by telling that the victors were afraid. 
No more of the Roman lash and the stain of blood, 
of the pale and dying lips. Few will feel with a 
great historian that the painted Crucifix is "the 
most repulsive object ever presented to the groaning 
adoration of mankind." Yet the Crucifix does but 
tell a part of the history of our Lord. It tells of the 
darkness and of the death ; the light and the life 
overflow from the immobility of the carven wood, and 
fill the heaven with blue and the Church with song. 

Let it be observed that this Resurrection joy — 
this joy in the sight of the Lord — which exhales 
from all the literature upon the subject which we 
possess, has the closest bearing upon the evidence 
of Christianity. 



102 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

The old, coarse theory of the stealing away of the 
sacred Body has long since been blown into space. 

The joy in the hearts of the disciples disposes of 
one of the two after-thoughts of critical ingenuity 
which have, for a generation, occupied the place of 
the dispossessed theory. 

It is urged that we know from authentic history 
that the death by crucifixion was by no means so 
rapid as has been generally supposed. The sufferer 
lingered on often for many hours— in some cases 
for a day, or for two days — and was taken down 
alive after all. He whom Christians adore was not 
really dead. ISTow this after-thought is disproved 
both by the character of Jesus and by the physio- 
logical observations of St. John. But it is disproved 
also by the literary witness to the existence of that 
joy in the hearts of the disciples. 

For if Jesus had not really died, had not under- 
gone some stupendous change, what effect must His 
appearance have produced upon His followers % 

Taken down from the cross only some forty hours, 
more or less ; His brow still lacerated, His wounds 
unhealed, His whole organization shaken by a nerve- 
storm ; cramped in every limb and joint ; awakened 
from a heavy swoon in the coolness of the sepulchre, 
with no other restorative than the pungency of the 
spices ; a spectral, feverish, lamed, tottering, trem- 
bling, skulking thing — could that have seemed the 
First-Begotten from the dead ? Those who saw Him 
in Gethsemane and on the cross, and again upon 
the great Easter Sunday, cannot speak of the Res- 
urrection without an enthusiasm which rises to al- 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 103 

most lyrical rapture. Listen to St. John's conception 
of the self-consciousness of the Resurrection-life of 
the Eisen Lord : " I am the first and the last, and 
the ever-living, and I became dead, and behold ! I 
am living to the ages of the ages." 

]STow this joy of the disciples, attested by all the 
literature which remains upon the subject, is rooted 
in — is unaccountable without — a real and glorious 
Resurrection. Let us fix our faith upon this Easter 
witness when objectors " so proudly dare us to our 
own defence." Let us recognize an effect (told with 
the artless vividness and simplicity of truth) which 
could have had but one cause. 

I must not leave this subject without reminding 
you of a psychological touch in St. Luke's narra- 
tive of the Ascension which appears to be on a level 
with that which we have just noticed. 

There must be many who feel (with Dean Stan- 
ley) the literary self-evidence of this brief notice of 
the Ascension. It is so much beyond the narrator's 
conceivable range of invention. There may be an 
intense enthusiasm of admiration at work in the 
evangelist's mind ; but, if so, it is under an iron 
compression. The history may have a dream-like 
beauty, but it is kept within the lines of fact. One 
touch of fancy coloring would spoil the whole ; as 
the sky-line advertisement, caught by the medita- 
tive eye, goes far to vulgarize the very glory of the 
sunset or of the dawn. 

In this narrative there are two literary marks of 
truth. 

(a) The first is found in one remarkable differ- 



104 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

ence between the narrative of the Nativity and that 
of the Ascension. At Christmas the Eternal had 
stooped to an "infinite descent" of humiliation. 
Yet at that moment the music of heaven is repre- 
sented as overflowing. " Glory to God in the high- 
est." 

But at the Ascension no songs are audible by 
men. There may, indeed, have been such. The 
old Psalms may breathe some prophetic anticipa- 
tion of them. " Lift up your heads, O ye gates ; 
and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors." But 
such sounds were unheard below. 

If the story had been of human invention, all we 
know of literature tells us how it would have been. 
Over the cradle there would have been silence, and 
a sky as hushed as a frozen sea. At the Ascension 
the air would have quivered with the melody, and 
the mountain have been shaken by the storm of 
the triumph. But because the narrative is true, 
the liturgical instincts of the evangelist are kept in 
check. The Church is supplied with no song for 
the Ascension-ticle to form a counterpart to the 
" Gloria in Excelsis." The evangelist, who walks 
with such a firm historical tread through the Gos- 
pels and Acts, who gives chronological marks, who 
observes so carefully in the storm and shipwreck, 
who preserves and uses documents, has a mind 
which is desirous of veracity, which respects every 
attainable accuracy because it is of the noble fam- 
ily of truth. To the temple which he raises" to the 
truth he will neither prefix a porch of romance, 
nor append an exit of fiction. Because the narra- 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 105 

tive is true, all the songs are for the cradle, all the 
silence is for the return to the Throne. 

(b) Another mark of literary truth in the narra- 
tive of the Ascension is in the touch. " They re- 
turned to Jerusalem with great joy." We are con- 
stantly told that the Ascension of Christ is borrowed 
from that of Elijah and modelled upon it. 

Indeed ! 

At the ascension of Elijah there was the troubled 
parting of poor humanity — its bitter cry and rent 
raiment — "My father! my father! the chariots of 
Israel and the horsemen thereof." 

Once only in the long history of the separation 
of loving hearts has a parting, known to be for life, 
had such an effect as St. Luke describes. The part- 
ing of the soldier for service, of the emigrant with 
those he leaves behind, of the death-bed — with the 
pathos of one or other of these there is scarcely an 
eye which has never been wet. Tear by year, the 
few exceptional men who may justly be called great 
(especially Churchmen) are being called away. Who 
that has ever been brought very near to one of them 
has felt that earth was enriched and gladdened by 
their removal ? Who returned from Durham, Pe- 
terborough, or St. Paul's, from the graves of Light- 
foot, Liddon, Magee, glad and radiant with exulta- 
tion? Other Churchmen remain, able, true, good, 
eloquent. The royal succession of genius and sanc- 
tity never ceases. " Howbeit they attain not to the 
first three." We did not return to our Jerusalem 
" with great joy." 

We may fairly claim a literary witness to the 



106 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

truth of the narrative of the Ascension in that 
touch with its depth of meaning. " He was parted 
from them."' Yes ! Yet earth seemed richer, bright- 
er, grander; not poorer and darker. It laughed 
with the light of promise. "And they returned 
to Jerusalem with great joy." 

So far I have tried to indicate some lines of lit- 
erary truth in the great contexture of probabilities 
which may well acid firmness to our belief in the 
reality of our Lord's Death, Eesurrection, and As- 
cension. 

The first conclusion which I wish to draw comes 
directly from the substance of this thought. 

ISTo doubt an immortality of some kind is pres- 
aged for us from other sources, {a) It is announced 
by the prophecies of conscience, (b) It comes to us 
with tender and resistless insistence in the passionate 
theodicy of bereaved human love. Every one who 
believes in God the Father believes that aspirations 
and yearnings are not given us for nothing. Our 
nature is not mendacious in its most solemn mo- 
ments. Human hearts that mourn could be charged 
with an intensity of passion not only useless, but 
fatally cruel, if the object of that feeling were a 
nonentity, and the hope of meeting a delusion, (c) 
Immortality is also presaged by the creations of 
human genius. The spirit of music is not impris- 
oned in the thin bars of ink upon Handel's score, or 
"thoughts that breathe and words that burn" in 
the marks of the printer's type or the writer's pen. 
Ever and anon some king of thought looks upon 
the living across the gulf of ages, and makes the 



PKIMAEY CONVICTIONS 107 

air which we breathe electric with the intensity of 
life that leaps from his words. In a university the 
dead are your teachers more than the living ; and 
your best and richest thoughts are the gifts of the 
deathless dead. Faith tells us that " they live be- 
cause they live unto God"; reason adds that "they 
live because they live unto us." This is one of the 
demonstrations of which Plato might have said 
"that to your clever creatures it is unconvincing, 
but to the wise convincing.* 

But with belief in the Resurrection of Jesus comes 
belief in the only immortality solid enough to be 
worth much to creatures like us — the Resurrection 
of the Bod}^. 

If Jesus really died and really rose, then life and 
death become different things. Upon any other hy- 
pothesis life is so dwarfed and stunted. Sometimes 
as years go on for the philosopher, disenchantment 
grows with a preponderance of one-sided knowl- 
edge which, for all its vastness and with all our re- 
spect for a mind so deep, patient, original, we must 
pronounce to be unwholesome. Music loses its 
charm because it is mysterious for him. The pri- 
meval forest has no awful spell because he can ex- 
plain its existence. The splendor upon the pea- 
cock's breast sickens because he cannot. 

JSTever let any Christian be ungrateful for the 
patient philosophy which ascends to axioms that it 
may descend to works. If there are secrets of value 



* f] 8e 8rj dnoda^Ls iarai beivols /xev airicrros — aof^ols 8e ttkttt]. 
Plat., " Phsecl.," 245 C. 



108 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

for suffering humanity to be wrested from the goat's 
blood or the rat's spleen, true honor be to those 
true benefactors of their race who devote them- 
selves to the task. The education of bacilli is a 
slow process, costly in suffering and disappointment ; 
let us hope that it will one day be completed, and 
an " attenuated virus " be produced less deadly than 
the poison of the cobra. Nay, and other experi- 
ments in a different region are' in progress — ex- 
periments necessarily fragmentary and precarious, 
peculiarly liable to subjective disturbances, experi- 
ments in occult sub -conscious strata of psychical 
experience. We will not reject them in block, be- 
cause the messages from the other side are gener- 
ally so silly. The majority of most societies are 
possibly silly, and there may be silly and vapid in- 
telligences elsewhere as well as here. But whatever 
may come of these experiments (wisely conceived 
and carefully carried out), the one thing which can 
ever give us true hope for ourselves and others is 
the assurance that " the Lord is risen indeed." 
Therefore, we believe " in the resurrection of the 
body, and the life of the world to come." 

I close this discourse with some practical remarks 
upon conversation. " The two disciples talked to- 
gether of all these things which had happened." 
In this case, no doubt, the circumstances were so 
recent that they compelled conversation upon the 
subject. The last drops of the Saviour's blood were 
scarcely dry upon the dust of Golgotha ; the air 
round them was still quivering with His presence. 

In the present relations of the Church and of the 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 109 

world there is a kind of conversation about Christ 
and things spiritual which may not unjustly be stig- 
matized as forced and unreal. 

How is it in university circles at present ? 

Surely a religious word is possible, even among 
younger men. But it can only be ventured on two 
conditions. It must be sweet, seasonable, conversa- 
tional. Above all, it must be appropriate to the 
character; inseparable from it as fragrance from 
the rose or music from running water. The con- 
sistent young man in college is impervious to the 
shafts of ridicule, if only he wears the armor of 
consistency. If not, he is pierced through with ar- 
rows that tingle and blister. We all perhaps know 
one or two men who may justly dare to speak to 
their companions of Christ. Their being is charged 
with the influence of His life. They have been on 
the mountains ; the starlight is in their eyes ; they 
have gained purity from the eternal snow. There 
is about them the frank gayety of some gentle tri- 
umph, the sweetness of some immortal sorrow, the 
power of some unuttered thought, the brightness 
of some magnetic attraction. Souls are healed and 
uplifted, almost new born, as they are touched and 
soothed by them. 

" The stern were mild when thou wert by ; 
The flippant put himself to school 
And heard thee, and the brazen fool 
Was softened, and he knew not why.'' 

Such was the bishop of whom Ignatius wrote to the 
Trallians, "his very bearing is a great lesson, and 



110 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

his gentleness is his strength." Such was Keble in 
his youth. A friend of his has recorded that in 
a careless mood he spoke superciliously to Keble 
of Law's " Serious Call " as " a clever book." As 
they parted after a long vacation Keble said ten- 
derly, yet solemnly, " Do you remember, Froucle, 
telling me that the ' Serious Call ' was a clever kind 
of book ? If you go on in that way you will be ca- 
pable of saying that the Day of Judgment is a pretty 
sight." Till the hour of his death the younger man 
never forgot the warning. 

It seems to me that in any university those who, 
in a theological school, are sincerely desirous to 
make conversation tend to the glory of Christ enjoy 
a special advantage — probably in all circles touched 
at some point or other by recent theological criti- 
cism. 

Bear with me yet for a few moments while I at- 
tempt to contrast the present with the past in the 
two English universities of which I know some- 
thing. 

In reading contemporary records of English uni- 
versity life during the last five decades of the last 
century, we are painfully conscious of a depressing 
tone in all things moral and spiritual. The autobi- 
ography of Gibbon may speak for one university ; 
the letters of Gray, the poet, for another. Few 
purer or more studious lives than that of Gray have 
evei; been passed within academic walls. But with 
all the exquisite feeling which still makes Gray's 
Latin lyrics almost as living as his English, with his 
large capacity for whole regions of art and history 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 111 

untrodden by his contemporaries, no trace appears 
in his letters of the real appreciation either of 
Scripture or of ecclesiastical antiquity or of the 
theology which he yet devoutly accepted. " Whole 
pages of commonplace stuff, that for stupidity might 
have been wrote by Dr. "Waterland," is his criticism 
upon an unreadable book. - ISTow, with all the un- 
deniable merits which justly secure for "Waterland a 
prominent place upon the shelf of every English 
theological student, it may be granted that his style 
is dull. But no man who has ever been at the 
pains to master the substance of his teaching upon 
the Sacraments — with its noble reverence and mod- 
eration — has not felt himself richer and wiser. But 
even in the better circles of the Cambridge of Gray, 
theology was almost nowhere. Those were the days 
of a silken prelacy, a slumbering priesthood, a si- 
lent laity ; of a theology precise in form, but pale, 
pulseless, and pedantic. A little later, at Oxford, 
within the too brief space of Gray's life, a splendid 
diversion in favor of theological criticism was made 
by a writer of genius. Lowth was happy enough to 
grasp strongly and expound beautifully the true 
generative principle of Hebrew poetry. From R. 
Azarias he recovered the lost secret of parallelism — 
that alternate beat of the wings of Semitic poetic 
thought, that language of the heart which can nev- 
er say all at once, but loves to repeat it in another 
form. This discovery Lowth enshrined in pellucid 



* "Memoirs of Mr. Gray," Section IV. Letter IV. (1747). By 
W. Mason, M.A. 



112 PKIMAET CONVICTIONS 

Latin ; he applied it through the wide region of 
prophecy ; he illustrated it by translations (except 
in his lovely rendering of Psalm cxxxix.), breathing 
a softer air, vested with a richer coloring, and mov- 
ing to a more artful music, than the awful austerity 
of Hebrew inspiration might altogether justify. Bat 
the genius of the Professor of Poetry in producing 
a book which is still one of the freshest and most 
delightful in the theologian's library, and whose 
leading idea is perpetually influencing Biblical crit- 
icism, wakened the youth of Oxford. The idleness 
of young men then was not, it must be confessed, as 
their idleness now. Cricket had not developed the 
superb and elegant intricacies which lend an almost 
intellectual fascination to the most various and 
splendid of games ; the river was not swept by the 
blades of skilful and powerful oarsmen. In Lowth's 
day, from the tavern and the tap ; from " the dull 
and decorous potations of the Common-room," de- 
scribed by Gibbon ; from the melancholy triumphs 
of the spirit of laziness, of which Gray writes in lan- 
guage where pathos struggles with indignation, and 
which enables us to measure the progress of moral 
and intellectual life (" we shall smoke, we shall tip- 
ple, we shall doze together — brandy will finish what 
port began " *) ; the young men of Oxford thronged 
to the Sheldonian Theatre with a new light in their 
eyes and a new instinct in their souls. The Bible 
was no longer for them a hotch-potch of incoherent 
rhapsodies to be droned over by drowsy chaplains 



* " Memoirs of Mr. Gray," Section IV. Letter X. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 113 

in college chapels ; it was a living word, part of 
which was cast in the grandest form of ancient po- 
etry. The intellect and the heart of Oxford were 
touched. 

"Who can doubt of the greater purity, elevation, 
and approach to Christian conversation which must 
have come with such an influence ? 

This must have been more than renewed during 
the more practical and interior movements associ- 
ated with the names of Simeon and Pusey. And 
now to the English Cambridge these last years have 
brought another opportunity. A Cambridge School 
of Scientific Theology has been formed, trained in 
the magnificent accuracy, precision, and thorough- 
ness of their critical scholarship. Its productions 
may have, no doubt, some blemishes concealed by 
a natural admiration. Possibly the Oriel School, 
with its boundless inferiority of scholarship, saw 
the City of God more clearly and lived more deeply 
with the sacramental life. But those productions 
are free from two deficiencies which have long been 
attributed to Cambridge theology. It has been sup- 
posed to give to algebra a little more than the things 
of algebra ; to the spirit, a little less than the things 
of the spirit. In its dread of mysticism it has been 
supposed to measure the infinite by the tape-line of 
the mensurative faculty, to label and letter pigeon- 
holes, to take no account of azure depths and 
golden distances. But now from its latest school 
have come the best commentaries on St. John, on 
Hebrews, on Galatians and Philippians, the nearest 
contact with the spirit of St. John and St. Paul. 
8 



114 PKIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

Its greatest master took a subject apparently worn 
with constant controversy from Milton and Pearson 
onward. He hung over it with a laborious penetra- 
tion which nothing could escape. He called to his aid 
every inscription on every stone discovered in Asia 
Minor. He drew his illustrations from every quarter 
— the jail of Bunyan, the broken life of Augustine, 
the undeniable instances of telepathy at the time of 
death collected by the Society for Psychical Kesearch. 
The martyr Ignatius stands before us with his sim- 
ple goodness and his broken Greek, and we learn to 
look at antiquity largely and patiently, with eyes 
neither Latin nor Greek, neither Anglican nor Non- 
conformist, but true and human. Among the men 
who are devoted to such studies and their friends 
what opportunities for holy thoughts and Christian 
conversation, for discourses even as they walk in the 
country, to which Jesus himself may draw near ! But 
whether thus or otherwise blest, my sons, blessed 
they among you who have made such friends as even 
in youth's gay communings have been able to seize 
God's moments in common life, to baptize them in 
the sunshine or the tears of heaven. Blessed who, 
looking back, shall be able to say, "Did not our 
heart burn within us ?" — burn with the sacred fire 
which only Christ's words possess ; with the glow 
which pierces, transfigures hearts into a sacrifice 
unto God. Blessed who can say, " There at Cam- 
bridge, even in life's passionate spring, Christ's feet 
were beside me on the grass ; Christ's breath was 
upon my cheek. From the cricket-field, from the 
river, from the honor -list (with its triumph or its 



PKniAKY CONVICTIONS 115 

tragedy, now a mere point of light or fading shadow 
in the distance), He called me. As the priest takes 
the bread so He took me, and brake me with pain 
or disappointment. Brake me ! Yes ; but He made 
me at once the same and different, and sanctified me 
for His work." And now the walk, not of three- 
score furlongs, but of threescore years or more, is 
almost over. I can bow my white head and say, 

"Abide with me from morn to eve, 
For without Thee I cannot live : 
Abide with me when night is nigh, 
For without Thee I dare not die." 

Called upon as I am to-day to address the stu- 
dents of a theological school in your' famous and 
venerable American Cambridge, there are some 
words which I desire to add to an argument whose 
main lines were originally addressed to the students 
of that other Cambridge whose name you are so 
proud to bear. 

At home I fear that we have a general suspicion 
of theological colleges. We are jealous of " semina- 
ries," and conceive that the strength and liberty of 
university men are ill enhanced by the narrowness 
which distinguishes the epicene seminarists of Con- 
tinental Europe. But here, with your proximity to 
Harvard, there is no such danger — very much the 
contrary. Your theological school lives in the stim- 
ulating air of a great university. You are Harvard 
down to the very root of your mind. It is said that 
on some great Australian plain the wild rose is killed 
by the fierce and more aggressive odor of the sweet- 



116 PEIMAET CONVICTIONS 

brier — even without actual contact. And the faith 
which survives in such perilous proximity to the 
fierce breath of Harvard intellectual life promises 
to have the strength of immortality, to pass from 
the world of opinion into the higher region of con- 
viction. Yours, gentlemen of this school, is a grave 
responsibility. Do you bear aloft the standard of 
your Master in purity of life? Do you influence 
Harvard, or are you borne away helplessly from the 
old bank by the strong current of Harvard? May 
there be some among you, like Gregory and Balil 
in the kindred dangers of the University of Athens. 
May you carry away with you from this fair spot 
the spirit of St. Augustine, of Pearson, of Butler, 
of Lightfoot. May you imitate the spirit of these 
great teachers ; and you will honor them most by 
reading them with a respectful freedom. It is your 
honor and your pride that the home of your young 
intellectual life is in a place where every inch of 
ground is hallowed by the memories of men who 
thought highly and wrote exquisitely. Longfellow, 
Lowell, Channing, Emerson, speak to us at every 
step. You must honor them, yet you must dare 
to differ from them. You will not speak lightly 
of errors which arose from the recoil against the 
extravagances of speculation in a land where the 
witness of the historic Church was practically non- 
existent for the last momentous century. But you 
must lift up the standard of the creeds. You must 
abide by the eternal truths of the Incarnation and 
the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, if you would be 
faithful ministers of Jesus Christ. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 117 

B 

Epidemic Enthusiasm as a Solution of Belief in 
the Resurrection of Our Lord 

We have already referred to two of the three 
possible rationalistic theories upon the Resurrec- 
tion. 

1. The coarse old theory — the vulgar invention of 
the chief priests and elders — Paley has sufficiently 
refuted with his patient, if unoriginal, common-sense 
and perfect lucidity of exposition. It is now blown 
into space. 

2. The other thought of later criticism — that He 
did not die, but was taken down alive from the cross 
— has been examined in the last discussion. It is re- 
futed by three arguments : (a) The accurate physio- 
logical observation of St. John absolutely proves 
actual death.* (b) The radiant, lasting, uneradica- 
ble joy of the disciples disposes of the hypothesis. 
Such a trembling and lacerated creature — the spec- 
tral survivor of such ignominious torture — could 
never have awakened such splendid confidence. 
Those who saw Him in the suffering upon Good 
Friday, and then again upon Easter Sunday, cannot 



* John xix. 34 ; xx. 20. The remarkable essay by the Rev. 
S. Haughton, M.D., of the University of Dublin, on the physi- 
cal cause of the death' of Christ, contributed by that eminent 
physiologist to the "Speaker's Commentary" at the present 
writer's urgent request (N. T. iv. pp. 349, 350), is far in advance 
of Dr. Stroude's discussion of the same subject, and has met 
with too little attention. 



118 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

recall the impression without bursts of almost lyri- 
cal enthusiasm. John in spirit hears Him say, "I 
am the living, and I became dead ; and I am living 
unto the ages of the ages." * The faith of the dis- 
ciples is rooted in the resurrection, f Their joy is a 
blossom colored with the summer of its touch, (c) 
Above all, perhaps, the theory is refuted by the 
character of Jesus. The Holy One would never 
have condescended to accept worship grounded upon 
so terrible a mistake. He could not have been holy 
had He done so. 

3. The hypothesis of an epidemic enthusiasm — 
like that of the Calvinists of the Cevennes mad- 
dened by the persecution of the dragonnaders — 
finds many supporters at the present day. 

Now, what is required by the facts of the case is 
to give some fairly rational account of such a state 
of mind as that of the disciples after such a tragic 
overthrow of all their hopes. 'Among the now nu- 
merous class of writers who have learned how to 
paint picturesque phrases there is no greater instru- 
ment of self-deception than generalized conceptions 
of the character of races. For instance, the poetical 
and chivalrous imaginativeness of the Celt goes for 
much, even in practical politics, with otherwise un- 
sentimental politicians. But the poet can drive a 
fierce bargain, and the cavalier has little regard for 
helpless beauty in possession of land, and the child 
of imagination may persuade herself in ideal dreams 



* Apoc. i. 18. f 1 Peter i. 2, 3, 4. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 119 

that " something and nothing are just the same " ; 
• but he 

"wisely declines to extend bis notion 
To the finite relations of thalers and groschen." 

It is easy and fashionable to speak of the spring- 
time of Galilee ; to throw in the scent of flowers 
and the intoxication of nature; to introduce senti- 
mental women in the hallucination of a half-crazy 
love, and hardly less sentimental men, their spirits 
drenched by the light of the dazzling sky, walking 
in a prolonged day-dream, in the state when a dis- 
tant form can be mistaken for another, and a cloud 
going up from Olivet for the trail of the garment of 
an ascending Lord, and a dream of affection pro- 
ject itself into the solidity of fact. But it is well to 
ask ourselves stolidly whether the materials really 
exist for such a creation. The Oriental of Palestine — 
the S} r rian, the Arab, the Jew — is in the same cate- 
gory as other favorites of romance. But, in fact, 
his novels and poems are very brief, very inartistic, 
and very coarse. He never dreams day-dreams; 
outside the Esquimaux, no people under the sun 
have "less of the sentiment of nature." The sus- 
tained-hallucination theory requires for its basis 
that super-sensitive refinement of exaltation which 
is exclusively modern, which is fed upon a long 
course of circulating libraries and of semi-erotic or 
spasmodic poetry. The Oriental nature is incredu- 
lous through apparent credulity, it possesses an in- 
eradicable craft in all its simplicity, lies so openly 
as to be splendidly candid, and cares for nothing 



120 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

less than the stars of heaven or the flowers of the 
valley. Its dreams are as unlike as possible to the 
dream of David Grieve.* 

Ct 

" He was seen of me also."— 1 Cor. xv. 8. 

The evidence of the Resurrection of Jesus in the 
former division of this Discussion receives real con- 
firmation from the Conversion of St. Paul. 

Let us assure ourselves of the reality of that con- 
version. 

Let us read carefully the opening verses of the 
fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corin- 
thians and especially the eighth — " Last of all, He 
was seen also by me." 

If the Corinthians remembered with what argu- 
ment he had preached the Gospel to them, if they 
did not make their act of faith with a light fanati- 
cism, $ four great facts were deeply stamped upon 
their souls — Christ's death, burial, resurrection, mani- 
festation^ " He is risen indeed." || The manifesta- 
tion, the sight, is repeated five times in the long- 
drawn argument from human witness.^" At last, as 
Chrysostom, with his passionate instinct, sees the 



* See Note on p. 127. 

t Delivered in substance in the Chapel of the Protestant Epis- 
copal Theological School, Cambridge, Mass., April, 1892. 

% elicrj, 1 Cor. XV. 2. 

§ cnvidavev, erdcpr], iyrjyeprai, acpdr], 1 Cor. XV. 3, 4, 5. 

II eyrjyeprai. Cf. 1 Cor. XV. 20. 

1" Note the repeated &(pdr), and the repeated eireira (== " then 
next in order") in 1 Cor. xv. 5, 6, 7, 8. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 121 

apostle "jubilant, with the storm- light upon his 
face," last of all, just as if to the weakly youngest 
of the family,* " He appeared also to me." f It is 
the pathetic emphasis of a genuine humility. 

Our present object is to observe that the Con- 
version of St. Paul — the latest recorded work done 
by Jesus upon earth — was real and stands unique 
among such incidents. 

1. It was a real conversion. 

It involved a great and real change of character. 

It has been argued (and the observation is not 
without a measure of truth) that the men who pass 
through the phenomenon known as conversion are 
almost universally of one or other of two tempera- 
ments — they are either ardent or reflective. The 
reflective are changed perhaps, but they are not 
transformed ; the ardent are transformed, but they 
are not changed. Paul's whole history shows that 
he belonged to the second category of tempera- 
ment. He was transformed, to all outward appear- 
ance. But he simply exchanged one fanaticism for 
another. 

Yet the powerful psychological touch of St. Luke 
enables us to see that St. Paul's character was really 
changed. In the Acts, Saul is represented to us 
with terrible power as having " his very breath im- 
pregnated with blood and menace." He asks for 
letters of request from the High -priest against 



* axmepel rc3 eKrpco^aTt, &<fidq KayLoi, 1 Cor. xv. 8. 
t A glance at the N. T. will show bow vitally important it is 
to keep the me for the last word in the sentence. 



122 PEIMAUY CONVICTIONS 

those whose sex and weakness is usually their pro- 
tection. " Both men and women" * as the historian 
significantly tells us, in chains he drags off to Jeru- 
salem. But as we read one after another of St. 
Paul's letters, we feel the change from savage big- 
otry to an almost girlish sympathy. "We are ready 
to cry, with the simple old expositors of the Bible, 
that " the voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars of 
Lebanon " ; that if " Benjamin has ravened as a wolf 
in the morning, he divides the spoil" of human souls 
tenderly " at night." f 

Paul's conversion, therefore, was real. 

2. It was also unique. 

What had he been ? 

If stained with blood, yet no murderer for gold or 
passion, no idler floating down the stream of time, 
no drunkard with shaken nerves, no profligate sud- 
denly brought face to face with the awful purity of 
God's law. Deep in his inner thought was the sol- 
emn idea of duty. " I truly thought with myself 
that I ought" X 

Let us take his own straightforward story.§ One 
sight of the risen Jesus in an atmosphere which was 
still electrical with His Presence ; some ten words, || 
familiar, breathing of the Syrian fields, yet piercing 
and pathetic ; some ten lines,!" with a summary of 
the life which lay before him. And issuing from 
this we have in authentic history, or in those of his 



* Acts ix. 1, 2. § Acts xxvi. 11-19. 

t Ps. xxix. 5 ; Gen. xlix. 27. \\ Acts xxvi. 14. 

| Acts xxvi. 9. IT Acts xxvi. 15-19. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 123 

epistles which no sane man can well consider other 
than authentic, the record of a new life. It was 
not new in being earnest, moral, religious — all this 
it had been before and in the highest degree * — but 
it was new in its principle, in its object, in the per- 
sonality within whose influence it was enfolded and 
ensphered — " Christ in him, he in Christ." 

The brilliant French writer whose general amia- 
bility was tempered by a strong personal dislike to 
Paul attributes the transformation to a fever. As 
he was riding impetuously to Damascus, a thunder- 
storm rolled along the flanks of Hermon and envel- 
oped him with its sheet of fire. Exhaustion, heat, 
excitement, the lightning, did their work in sun- 
stroke and delirious fever, producing permanent de- 
lusions. Let us inquire of any board of examiners 
of candidates for missionary work whether sun- 
stroke and temporary madness are part of the pre- 
vious equipment which is considered likely to make 
an effective missionary. We may ask the ripest 
scholars of all our universities whether they consider 
St. Paul a profound theologian or not. Theology 
may or may not be high in the ranks of science, 
but if it cannot be constructed or learned without 
acuteness and diligence it is scarcely likely to have 
been originated by a fanatic — a brainless text would 
soon be left to brainless commentators. 



* I desire to acknowledge, with the deepest gratitude, my 
large obligation here to one of the most masterly sermons ever 
delivered from an English pulpit — that by Dean Vaughan, pre- 
fixed to his edition of the Epistle to the Romans. 



124 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

The unique character of St. Paul's conversion is 
further brought out by the pause of restful thought 
which he gave himself before entering upon his 
active ministry — " I went down into Arabia." * 

Ko doubt there may be some difficulty in recon- 
ciling this passage with the ninth of Acts. But " he 
went into Arabia " — i. e. into the Sinaitic peninsula. 
There with Hagar's children f — among those rocks 
so full of memories — the spirit of the law manifested 
itself to his soul. As at the Transfiguration, there 
were with him Moses, Elijah, Christ. There night 
and day, with the meteor sunset, with the splen- 
did dawn, with the broad pure heavens over " the 
land of farnesses," % the memories of Moses and 
Elijah in those very spots haunted him. We 
have no need to fall back upon Jerome's allegor- 
izing from strange derivations or upon Chrysos- 
tom's missionary romance. His motive there was 
Elijah's — 

"'Tis well true hearts should for a time retire 
To holy ground, in quiet to aspire 

Towards promised regions of serener grace. 
On Horeb with Elijah let us lie, 
Where all around, on mountain, sand, and sky, 

God's chariot-wheels have left distinctest trace." 

The spirit which actuated Saul in his voluntary 
retirement was that of Moses — 



* Gal. i. 1G, 17. t Gal. iv. 25. 

\ Les lointains gives us a good notion of the picturesqueness 
of the Hebrew plural in Is;i. xxxiii. 17. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 125 

"That, separate from the world, his breast 
Might duly take and strongly keep 
The print of heaven." 

In this voluntary calm before the strong and 
stormy activities of his later years, we have yet an- 
other indication of the reality of Paul's conversion. 
For there are such things as unreal conversions, so 
that we can readily contrast his with such. Unreal 
conversions despise sacraments ; Saul's led him to 
the font and the altar. Unreal converts often fall 
away ; but Saul's bore him on through storms by 
sea, and tumults that roared down the streets of 
cities, and years that brought with them hatred 
from without, and the petty cares of small, struggling 
communities, until he was led forth upon the Ap- 
pian Road to die by the Roman sword. The unreal 
convert rushes on in ignoble haste ; he is so neces- 
sary to God in his own estimation that the interests 
of heaven will go to ruin without him ; he is inca- 
pable of thought or quiet or study ; but Paul goes 
down to Arabia for years that he may give the Sav- 
iour whom he loves a riper soul and a stronger arm. 

This real and unique conversion had a real and 
unique cause. Reality comes from reality. 

Thus, the conversion of St. Paul is credible or 
conceivable only on the hypothesis of the reality of 
the Resurrection of Christ. 

]STo wonder that it is the apostle's favorite sub- 
ject," and inspires his most magnificent bursts. His 



This nuance is not found in the Epistle to the Hebrews. 



126 PEIMAET CONVICTIONS 

tone in the passage which- we have been considering, 
is reasonable throughout. It arises from honest 
conviction and is well calculated to produce convic- 
tion. When I think of the Eesurrection of Jesus I 
always count St. Paul among the foremost witnesses 
of its reality. 



As the third Gospel is the Gospel of the Ascension, so the 
Epistle to the Hebrews (probably, I venture to think, from the 
same pen) is the Epistle of the Ascended Lord. The Resur- 
rection is only once distinctly mentioned in it — "The God of 
peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus" (Heb. 
xiii. 20). 



NOTE 



"November 2d. It seems to me that last night was the 
first night since she died that I have not dreamt of her. As a 
rule I am always witli her in sleep, and for that reason I am the 
more covetous of the sleep which comes to me so hardly. It is 
a second life. Yet before her illness, during our married life, I 
hardly knew what it was to dream. Two nights ago I thought 
I was standing beside her. She was lying on the long couch 
under the sycamore-tree whither we used to carry her. At first 
everything was wholly lifelike and familiar. Sandy was some- 
where near. She had the gray camel's-hair shawl over her 
shoulders, which I remember so well, and the white frilled cap 
drawn loosely together under her chin, over bandages and 
dressings as usual. She asked me to fetch something for her 
from the house, and I went, full of joy. There seemed to be a 
strange mixed sense at the bottom of my heart that I had some- 
how lost her and found her again. When I came back, nurse 
was there, and everything was changed. Nurse looked at me 
with meaning, startled eyes, as much as to say, ' Look closely, it 
is not as you think.' And as I went up to her, lying still and 
even smiling on her couch, there was an imperceptible raising 
of her little white hand as though to keep me off. Then in a 
flash I saw that it was not my living Lucy ; that it could only 
be her spirit. I felt an awful sense of separation and yet of 
yearning ; sitting down on one of the mossy stones beside her, 
I wept bitterly, and so woke, bathed in tears. ... It has often 
seemed to me lately that certain elements in the Resurrection 
stories may be originally traced to such experiences as these. I 



128 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

am irresistibly drawn to believe that the strange and mystic 
scene beside the lake, in the appendix chapter to the Gospel of 
St. John, arose in some such way. There is the same mixture 
of elements — of the familiar with the ghostly, the trivial with 
the passionate and exalted — which my own consciousness has 
so often trembled under in these last visionary months. The 
well-known lake, the old scene of fishers and fishing-boats, and 
on the shore the mysterious figure of the Master, the same yet 
not the same ; the little, vivid, dream-like details of the fire of 
coals, the broiled fish, and bread; the awe and longing of the 
disciples — it is borne in upon me with extraordinary conviction 
that the whole of it sprang, to begin with, from the dream of 
grief and exhaustion. Then, in an age which attached a pecul- 
iar and mystical importance to dreams, the beautiful, thrilling 
fancy passed from mouth to mouth, became almost immediately 
history instead of dream — just as here and there a parable mis- 
understood has taken the garb of an event — was after a while 
added to and made more precise in the interest of apologetics, 
or of doctrine, or of the simple love of elaboration, and so at 
last found a final resting-place as an epilogue to the fourth 
Gospel." 



Discussion ID 



Delivered in substance in the Church of the Heavenly Rest, Thurs 
March 24th, 1892 



" Au antinomy is a pair of contradictory propositions, each 
of them susceptible separately of the highest proof which the 
nature of the subject-matter admits, but which are incapable 
of conciliation to our present capacity of reason." — Note from 
my " Oxford Analysis of Logic," 1847. 



FOURTH PRIMARY CONVICTION 

" I believe . . . that He shall come to judge the quick and 
the dead." 

" Guilty of an eternal sin." — Mark iii. 29.* 

The view which truth forces us to take of this 
subject will, doubtless, seem to conflict'' with what 
has been said of the sunshine of the two Creeds. 
But the darkness is only indicated by a solemn 
lifted finger. The voice trembles and dies away 
into silence. The Creed exercises its deepest re- 
serve. 

At all events it is only here that the Primary 
Conviction of God's Justice in the dark Hereafter 
of unrepented sin can find its place. 

There is, generally speaking, no safer guide to 
the theological student than the " excellent Bishop 
Pearson, the very dust of whose writings is gold." 
The most serious error of his "Exposition of the 
Creed " is his mode of dealing with the twelfth 
article — "the life everlasting" — in which he ap- 
plies it to the state of man after the resurrection, 
to the condemnation of the lost, with a ghastly and 
passionless lucidity of statement. 



* e'voxos almvlov a/xapT^fxaros. This would be better rendered 
-" guilty of eternal sin." 



132 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

This mode of dealing with the last article of the 
Creed entirely destroys one of the most beautiful 
conceptions in Scripture, and places us outside the 
lovely atmosphere of the Apostles' symbol.* There 
are two words in the New Testament which, from 
the exigencies of our language, are alike rendered 
" life." One of these words f means the principle 
of animal life, the means by which that life is 
preserved or gladdened, X and especially the span 
of time through which it is preserved or pro- 
longed. It is the animal, sentient, chronological 



* I add with regret that the name of one to whom I am un- 
der still greater obligations than to Pearson must be added to 
the Anglican expositors of the Creed who have taken this view, 
though with greater hesitation. Isaac Barrow writes : " The 
immediate consequence of the resurrection common to just 
and unjust is (as set down by the Apostle to the Hebrews) 
Kpifia alavLov, that judgment or doom by which the eternal 
state of every person is determined. Now this state, generally 
taken (as respecting both the righteous and blessed, the wicked 
and miserable), as it doth suppose a perpetual duration in be- 
ing and sense, so it may be called ' everlasting life'' ; although 
life ... is used to denote peculiarly the blessed state. The 
reason of the case requires that here we understand it gener- 
ally, so as to comprehend loth states — always enduring pangs 
of death, always in sense and in desire dying, we shall never 
be able to die." [A strange sub-section of the bright chapter 
of Life Everlasting !]— Works of Isaac Barrow, D.D., " An Ex- 
position on the Creed," vol. ii. p. 549. Hamilton's edition. 

t jSlOS. 

l"Os 8' av exn rov (5iav tov Koafiov, 1 John iii. 17. ("Whoso 
hath the living of this world." The R. V. renders " the world's 
goods.") 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 133 

existence here below. The other word in Xew 
Testament usage belongs to a higher sphere. It is 
the new life whose germ is given by God, which 
may be strengthened or stunted as it is used or 
abused, and which after the resurrection is to be 
clothed upon with a fitting framework. Thus the 
first of these terms gives us man's natural existence 
as one of the animal creation for threescore years 
and ten, more or less ; the second, man's super- 
natural existence as a child of God. The end of 
the Incarnation of Jesus Christ was to impart this. 
The old book tells us that " the first man Adam be- 
came a living soul." Over against this stands the 
splendid dogma, "The last Adam became a life- 
creating spirit." * So He tells us Himself, " I am 
come that ye might have life." The first term is 
of the earth, earthy ; of time and its finite con- 
ception. The second term is transcendent and infi- 
nite ; untranslatable into the language of temporal 
notation. To render " the life everlasting " of the 
Creed into " the never-failing endurance by the rep- 
robates of the torments due to their sins " is a ter- 
rible misuse of Scripture language. It is turning 
everlasting life into everlasting death. But it is 
also, further, entirely inconsistent with the spirit of 
the two Creeds. Kapidly they move from point to 
point, from creation to the world to come, from 
glory to glory, from sunshine to sunshine, from 
life to life, from the natural life of creation to the 
supernatural life of redemption. 



■ eayaros Aftafi etj nvevna {aonoiovv, 1 Cor. XV. 45. 



134 PEIMAKY CONVICTIONS 

But are we to dismiss the warnings of our Saviour 
and of His Apostles with an easy-going nonchalance ? 
Have the law's of the Moral Government of God 
been changed since Bishop Butler wrote his chapter 
of the Government of God by Rewards and Punish- 
ments; and particularly of the latter, with its blood- 
curdling massiveness in fact and sobriety in lan- 
guage? Are we to hold no moral convictions upon 
the terrible dangers of sin, because we protest 
against an abuse of Scripture language and of the 
spirit of the ancient Creeds? Assuredly not. If 
the Creed is sunny, if its main subjects are light 
and happy, if the mountain of God lifts up its 
highest peaks in unbroken light, yet like other 
great mountains it has dark folds as well as 

"visionary majesties of light." 

It is under the belief in the Judgment that the aw- 
ful conviction of the possibility of separation from 
God should be placed. 

"We shall (I.) speak of our expectation of a Gen- 
eral Judgment, and then (II.) consider the accord- 
ance of the conception of eternal sin with that 
which we know of human character. 

I 

Our expectation of the General Judgment of course 
is based upon the word of Jesus Christ. Being what 
He is — the Incarnate Son of God, and the First-be- 
gotten from the dead — we find our assurance in that. 

Reason supplies us with two great arguments for 
the General Judgment. One from the conscience 



PKI3IAEY CONVICTIONS 135 

of history, so to speak ; the other, from the individ- 
ual conscience. 

1. General history points to a general judgment. 
If there is no such judgment to come, then there is 
no one definite moral purpose in human society. 
Progress would be a melancholy word, a deceptive 
appearance, a stream that has no issue, a road that 
leads nowhere. No one who believes that there is 
a Personal God who guides the course of human 
affairs can come to the conclusion that the genera- 
tions of man are to go on forever without a wind- 
ing up, which shall decide upon the doings of all 
who take part in human life. In the philosophy of 
nature, the affirmation or denial of purpose is the 
affirmation or denial of God. So in the philosophy 
of history. Society without the General Judgment 
would be a chaos of random facts, a thing without 
rational retrospect or definite end, i. e. without God. 
A drama, however long-drawn, must have a last act. 
The last act of the drama of history is " The Day of 
the Judgment." 

2. A second argument is derived from the indi- 
vidual conscience. Conscience, as a matter of fact, 
has two voices. One is present and imperative, tell- 
ing us what we are to do. One is prophetic, and 
warns us of that which we are to receive. If, there- 
fore, there is to be no universal judgment, no tribu- 
nal of shame or glory, our nature would prove to 
be mendacious at its very roots. 

Let us note that there is no Primary Conviction 
of the Christian Creed which can be absolutely iso- 
lated. For each has a solidarity with all the rest. 



136 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

The Creed grows from a centre of inner harmony. 
Its articles do not form a hotchpot of credenda. It 
was not made (as a feeble legend reports) by each 
of the apostles contributing his favorite article. 
One might as well suppose that nature gummed 
the leaves of flowers one by one, instead of working 
simultaneously and omnipresently. Moreover, each 
article is a revelation of Divine attributes which 
meet in unity. To divide the attributes by dividing 
the form in which they are revealed to us is to fal- 
sify the attributes; to give a monstrous develop- 
ment to one by not taking into account some other 
which is its balance and compensation. Thus, many 
men deny the truth of a punishment which involves 
final separation from God. They glory in the legal 
judgment which " dismisses hell with costs." But 
they do so by fixing their attention exclusively 
upon the one dogma which reveals one attribute of 
God. They isolate it from the Fall, from the Re- 
demption by Christ, from the gravity of sin, from 
the truth that all whom the message of the Gospel 
reaches may avoid the penal consequences of sin. 
It is impossible to face the dogma of eternal sep- 
aration from God without facing the dogma of Re- 
demption. For Redemption involves in its very 
idea the intensity of sin, which needed the sacri- 
fice of the Son of God; and, further, the fact 
that the offer of salvation is so free and wide that 
it cannot be put; away without a terrible wilful- 
ness. 

In dealing with many of the articles of the Creed, 
there are opposite extremes. Exaggerations lead to 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 137 

a reactionary revenge upon them which is, per- 
haps, more perilous than neglect. Thus, as regards 
eternal punishment, in one religious school ghastly 
exaggerations were prevalent. It was assumed that 
the vast majority of mankind " are destined to ever- 
lasting punishment " ; that " the floor of hell is 
crawled over by hosts of babies a span long." The 
inconsistency of such views with the love of God 
and with the best instincts of man was victori- 
ously and passionately demonstrated. Then unbe- 
lief turned upon the dogma itself, and argued, with 
wide acceptance, that " with the overthrow of this 
conception goes the whole redemption-plan, the In- 
carnation, the Atonement, the Kesurrection, and 
the grand climax of the Church-scheme, the Gen- 
eral Judgment." But the alleged article of faith 
was simply an exaggerated version of the article in 
one of its bearings, and the objections lay alto- 
gether against the exaggeration. 

II 

¥e proceed to consider permanent separation 
from God under the form of " eternal sin." It is 
our Lord's own phrase," and probably enables us 
best to grapple with the subject. 

Eternal sin is credible from what we know of 
character. 

1. Character is the whole tendency which leads us 
to think, will, and act in a particular way ; it is the 
fixed and final set of the moral being. 



Mark iii. 29. 



138 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

Tims character tends not only to be stereotyped, 
but to become, in a large degree, fatal and mechan- 
ical. Some young people, no doubt, seem to be able 
to take short courses of sin, not only with impunity, 
but even gracefully. Certain sins of the jeunesse 
doree are scarcely looked upon even by many moth- 
ers with much regret. Those clashing lads are so 
splendidly unregenerate ! They have dipped into 
a "creamed and mantling pool," but it has only 
been momentary. They soar again, and scatter the 
foul drops with a graceful carelessness from their 
flashing wings. This, however, may be merely ap- 
parent. The virgin soul is a deep vase. When the 
stain is once fixed, all the waters of the sea might 
roll over it and never wash it out. If the young 
will listen, there is a voice — most sweet and yet 
most awful — day and night repeating these words 
as if to an austere chant, " These are they which 
were not defiled with women ; for they are virgins. 
These are they which follow the Lamb whitherso- 
ever He goeth." O young soul ! thou must either 
keep or regain that purity. 

But, at last, a time comes when the character is 
fixed, and the result final as far as this life is con- 
cerned. Who has not known some man at college 
or in the military mess-room or in business — bright 
and sunny then, but of lax principles ; now a wreck 
and failure, a hopeless drunkard or profligate or 
gambler? The chief misery for very many such 
men is the abiding perception of a forfeited no- 
bility. It is this which is so powerfully drawn in 
"Paracelsus." Surely nothing is so sad as these 



PRIMARY C0XYICTI0XS 139 

late flashes of spiritual insight. That which one 
might have been stands out in visionary beauty 
crowned with stars ; that which one is looks so ter- 
ribly mean. 

2. iSTow let us turn to the bearing of this upon 
the Hereafter — if the Hereafter be the continuance 
of the present. We have only to push this law of 
character over the boundary-line of death ; to trans- 
late the fact of the moral nature which we observe 
into its spiritual equivalent. Will it not run exactly 
thus, " He that is unjust, let him be unjust still ; 
and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still " ? * 

But it will be said that this is giving to finite 
and passing sins an infinite effect. 

Let us grant that some sins, or even courses of 
sin, are passing and finite. Others, it would seem, are 
not. The second Epistle of St. Peter is not a great 
favorite with some fastidious scholars. Its Greek 
offends Baliol and Trinity. " Baboo Greek" I have 
heard it called, i. e. bearing the same relation to the 
Greek of Xenophon or Plato which the English of 
a young Hindoo gentleman bears to the English of 
Addison, Washington Irving, or Macaulay. Be it 
so. Yet one phrase of that Baboo Greek has burned 
itself into my memory, and I cannot get rid of it. 
" E} T es full of adultery, and that cannot cease from 
sin " ; fixed in an expression which they cannot lose, 
with an image which will never fade out of them ! | 



* Rev. xxii. 11. 

t 6<f) 6 'akfxovs e'xovres fi«TToiis fioixaXldos Kal dKarcnravo-Tovs 
afxaprias (2 Peter ii. 14 — " having eyes full of an adulteress "). 



140, PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

"What, then, if the sinner carries with him out into 
the new land, not merely the passing sin which he 
did, but the eternal sin which he will do inevitably, 
imperishably, inwardly ? The outward eye, that ex- 
quisite apparatus made of " a little jelly and a little 
leather," may glaze and become dust ; but the forbid- 
den image may have been carried on to that "inward 
eye which is the bliss " — or the hell — " of solitude." 

Two other passages stand out in my memory. 
They are both from the Gospel of the third Evan- 
gelist, one of whose purposes seems to be to put be- 
fore us pregnant psychological hints of the bliss or 
loss of the hereafter. " When once the master of 
the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, 
and ye begin to stand without* and to knock at the 
door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us." The be- 
ginnings of the renewed spiritual life, the joys of 
penitence, the first words, the first tears, the first 
prayers, the first eucharists, are so sweet! The 
first sounds of the great deep swelling of the angels' 
songs must be so thrilling to the souls of the pil- 
grims who have just passed over the border into 
Paradise ! The sense of loss, of being outside, must 
be also so new, so late, so long ! Yet another touch 
of that insight into the eternal world. " He walk- 
eth through dry places, seeking rest, and finding 
none." f There is no need of the weird images of 
other ages ; of the terrible passionless persistence 
of merciless argument with which the Schoolmen of 
Rome, or the Calvinist of Scotland and New Eng- 



Luke xiii. 25. t Luke xi. 24. 



PEIMAET CONVICTIONS 141 

land — Eutherford or Edwards— hardened plastic im- 
ages into metallic dogma, and pushed each of them 
into a logic of despair. AYe may, if we will, " dismiss 
hell with costs." But that " through dry places," 
that "seeking rest and finding none," will not away, 
even if we find ourselves able to suppress the fire 
that burns and blisters. For the lost soul there may 
be blue heaven, and the pomp of sunset, and the 
stars of the summer sky, and the winds that rustle 
through the leaves; but then — "the seeking rest 
and finding none." O Lord God most holy, O Lord 
most mighty, O holy and merciful Saviour, Thou 
most worthy Judge eternal, suffer us not at our last 
hour for any pains of death to fall from Thee ! 

It is Very worthy of notice that our Lord reveals 
to us that unbelief may, in certain cases and under 
certain conditions, become eternal sin. " Ye shall 
die in }^our sins ; ye shall die in your sins."* 

We may compare the pain of certain kinds of un- 
belief with physical pain. It would seem as if no 
pain were without certain alleviation, unless where 
a moral element comes in. 

A gifted hand last year described a hospital for 
incurables in one of the suburbs of London, f The 
writer to whom I refer states that the prevalent 
atmosphere was one of subdued cheerfulness, that 
the palace of pain was a home of peace. The alle- 
viation was procured by gleams of momentary re- 
lief, by wise and strong sympathy, in many cases 
by higher hope. Christ, indeed, came ; and, as in 



* Johp viii. 21, 24. t Mrs. Olipliant. 



142 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

the Eucharist, He took His creatures, and blessed 
and brake them ! And, again as in the Eucharist, 
they were still the same, but employed for a hidden 
purpose, as the vehicles of a loftier Presence. 

Now, if physical pain is not quite miserable, and 
if the present order of things is from God, why is 
unbelief thus punished? A remarkable book was 
published in Paris some twenty years ago, which 
has gone through many editions — " Le Doute et ses 
Yictimes dans le Siecle Present." * It is, as its au- 
thor says, a book which should have been written 
with tears. The names of those whose careers he 
traces, and whose written or spoken confessions he 
cites, include some of the first rank in literature — 
Jouffroy, Maine de Biran, Santa Eosa, Silvio Pel- 
lico, Yictor Cousin, Scherer, Ityron, Schiller, Leo- 
pardi, Alfred de Musset, and the poets of doubt in 
France. In that volume there is no mention of 
the death-bed fears which are said to have haunted 
Yoltaire, Gibbon, and Hume, and which have been 
stigmatized as " bogey horrors invented by old 
women to frighten boys and girls." No death-bed 
terrors, but lives of anguish, lives which show that 
there is one thing worse than falling into the hands 
of the living God — falling out of them into a god- 
less universe ! That volume, written inside and out- 
side "with lamentation and mourning and woe," is 
furnishing fresh materials with every year that 
passes. The most gifted woman's hand that ever 
held the pencil of romance wrote some of the sad- 



By M. r"Abb<3 Louis BaunarcL 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 143 

clest sentences ever traced upon earth. Her biog- 
rapher confesses that her life was one of deepest 
gloom ; that " she did not conceal that she esteemed 
it a wrong and a misery that she had ever been 
born." "Why such sustained, permanent, unassuaged 
misery, mental and spiritual, if there is no such 
thing as guilt in the mental and spiritual order ; if 
intellectual sin is only bad logic ; if he who rejects 
God's revelation is no more guilty than the stupid 
or idle undergraduate who fails to satisfy his exam- 
iners in " Barbara, Celarent," and the mysteries of 
deductive logic? It is of sin in the world of thought 
that Christ says, " Guilty of eternal sin." 

For years past the Church has been full of con- 
troversy upon the question of the Hereafter. As 
compared with our fathers, who acquiesced in the 
traditional teaching which gradually framed itself 
in Reformed Communions, after the denial of Pur- 
gatory, have we gained or lost ? 

"We have gained two things. 

1. Merely material images of suffering are, it is 
felt, not to be pressed too far. Pope, in one of his 
finished epigrammatic couplets, describes the fash- 
ionable preaching of his day in one of the royal 
chapels — ■ 

" To sleep the cushion and soft clean invite, 
Who never mentions hell to ears polite." 

But there may be a deeper feeling than politeness 
in the true ambassador of Christ, 

" Who loved to preach the Gospel, not the law, 
And forced himself to drive, but loved to draw." 

2. Yet, again, there are few who will lightly tell 



144 PRIMAET CONVICTIONS 

their fellow-men that the vast majority are inex- 
orably doomed to everlasting separation from God 
with everlasting torments. 

Two great streams of theology, widely separated 
along the rest of their course, met and mingled at 
this point during the last two centuries ; one stream 
came from Geneva, another came from Rome. 
Massillon can best show us of what volume and 
color the current was. We may still read his ser- 
mon " on the fewness of the Elect." Terrible logic ! 
Heaven is only for the innocent or for the penitent. 
" The way of death is the way of the many ; the 
saints are always singular." Then follows one of 
the grandest oratorical movements in the history 
of sacred eloquence. Jesus comes to judgment. 
That magnificent congregation must be divided 
into two parts, according to their character. The 
Throne is set. Rank, beauty, power, fame, are 
swept away. Four classes are left — the sinners 
who will not be converted ; the sinners who put 
conversion off ; those who, having been converted, 
fall away ; those who think that they are con- 
verted, but are not. And then, with streaming eyes 
and broken voice, the great orator asked, " Lord ! 
how many here to-day will be saved ?" 

What is to be said of this strain of teaching ? 

If scriptural, it is so only literally and in the way 
of misapplied logic. It over-represents one element, 
and uncler-represents another. It misses the Avhole 
mass and volume, the proportionate quantities, of 
the Creed and the Bible. 

No doubt we are very plainly told the two issues 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 145 

of judgment. " We must all appear before the judg- 
ment-seat of Christ ; that every one may. receive 
the things clone in his body, according to that he 
hath done, whether it be good or bad." * But this 
fact is neither obtrusively thrust upon us nor made 
the subject of arithmetical calculations, nor pro- 
jects lurid brimstone flashes over the whole field 
of vision, f Indeed, a blessed immortality itself 
is not made at all so much of as we should expect 
or desire.;}: Hope and fear are stimulants not to 
be recklessly administered. Like other stimulants 
they inebriate, and the Christian life is not inebria- 
tion, but the calm- strength of love and duty. § 



* 2 Cor. v. 10. 

t Outside the Apocalypse, Mark ix. 42-50 ; Heb. x. 26-32 ; 
xii. 25 are the chief passages. 2 Thess. i. 8, 9, is, no doubt, 
terribly significant ; but how beautifully balanced and compen- 
sated by the verses between which it is incased — verses 6, 7, 
and 10-12 ! 

I " Glory of warrior 1 

Glory of virtue ! 
Glory of song ! 

Nay, but she aim'd not at glory, no lover of glory she. 

Give her the glory of going on, and still to be. 

'•'If the wages of virtue be dust, 
Would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm or 
the fly ? 
She desires no isles of the blest — 
To rest in a golden groove or to bask in a summer sky. 
Give her the wages of going on, and not to die." 

Was the great poet thinking of Bishop Butler's words — " Our 
posthumous life may not be beginning anew, but going o?i"? 
§ There is a very perceptible difference in tone between the 
10 



146 PKIMAKY CONVICTIONS 

The guide whom the wise would select for the 
journey of life should be like the guide whom we 
should desire for a mountain excursion in the Alps. 
Which of two guides would be most likely to in- 
spire us with the spirits and elasticity calculated to 
insure success ? One, we will suppose, constantly 
exclaims : " You have been constrained to make an 
awful attempt. Look down at that frightful spot 
below, where the vapors are curling! That stack 
of rock, running up to a needle, is coated with ice. 
By it you must pass. One slip — and you will die a 
death too horrible to think of. Take care to look 
specially at that spot where the rainbow crosses 
were seen by one adventurer over the corpses of 
his fallen companions, and which are still marked. 
There the bones are bleaching through the endless 
years." Would this spirit brace up to hopeful en- 
ergy ; or rather that of another guide who says : 
" There may be dangers, but there is one sure and 
certain way. Think of the joyfulness and glory 
when the journey is finished. Remember that very 
weak and tottering steps have made their way in 



successful revivalist preachers of this generation and of the past. 
Edwards and Rutherford achieved the great triumphs of their 
"awakenings" by a lavish use of terror. Mr. Moody (whose 
name is ever to be mentioned with deep respect), who began 
on the same line, now works by melting tenderness, and by a 
complete indulgence from the awful conception of Judgment. 
It would be a curious subject of inquiry to investigate how far 
the utterances, real or alleged, of spiritualism have originated 
or influenced popular thought and feeling on this subject, and 
that of repeated lives or stages of probation after death. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 147 

safety. And, as you go, you will be met and helped 
by a marvellous guide worthy of all your confi- 
dence " ; and so, in truth, you will. " This God is 
our God forever and ever; he will be our guide 
unto " — ay, and over — " death." * 

Surely Massillon should have remembered our 
Lord's carefully guarded answer to him who asked, 
" Lord ! are there few that be saved ?" He would 
have done well to think of the splendid arithmetic 
of the victory of the Cross — the '"ten thousand 
times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands," 
" the great multitude which no man could number." 
Above all, so great a theologian should have been 
exalted by the very idea of the Incarnation. Did 
not the Word made Flesh stoop to our Manhood, 
and bear it aloft to the very throne of God ? 

Ill 

In the days when Oxford was still famous for 
study of Bishop Butler, a pious tutor of large ex- 
perience used to say that he had rarely known any 
student who was not more or less changed and so- 
bered by carefully reading the second chapter of 
the first part of " The Analogy." It is a striking 
illustration which Butler gives of the analogy be- 
tween the two finalities of punishment here and 
hereafter, when he calls upon us to read the awful 
passage at the close of the first chapter of Prov- 



* Ps. xlviii. 14. This illustration has been borrowed from 
the wonderful sermon of the Provost of Trinity College, Dub- 
lin, on "Eternal Punishment." 



148 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

erbs, and reminds us that the same language covers 
both. The whole passage applies with such per- 
fectly equal aptitude to what we see and experi- 
ence in the present world, and to what is revealed 
to us as to be expected in another, that -it is prac- 
tically impossible to say which of the two was in- 
tended.* 

This philosophy may indeed be too juvenile for 
desperate pessimists from nineteen to twenty-one. 
It may not be profound enough for the theologian 
of novels. I suppose that it would not tell with 
the creature who probably will soon appear in fic- 
tion, and for whom I am on the lookout — an ag- 
nostic heroine mourning over the incorrigible stu- 
pidity of a Christian husband. But no better or 
completer statement of natural punishment can ever 
be made.f 

Will any one say that there can be no eternal 
sin, no final punishment ? His conclusions must be 
derived from some world of the imagination, under 
different laws from that in which we live. 

A woman sins against her husband, against the 
law of purity, and she is discovered. She finds that 

" Every woe a tear may claim 
Except an erring sister's shame." 

She beats with broken wing and heart against the 



* Prov. i. 24-33. 

t Butler's balance between pleasure and the circumstances 
of the natural punishment of it may be summed up in seven 
words : present, greater, delayed, sudden, unexpected, inconsidera- 
tion, final. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 149 

fence of steel that excludes her from " society " for- 
ever. 

A man who has similarly sinned is not ordinarily 
punished with equal severity ; yet, if he be a man 
of sensitive nature, his sin finds him out. After all, 
his love to one may be the strongest affection of his 
soul ; to reign supremely in one heart, to hold a 
gentle and undivided dominion there, is the very 
life of his life. His transgression is confessed or 
discovered. Tears and a pardon follow. There is 
still affection, still love, still forgiveness. But the 
nameless something between heart and heart, the 
perfect trust, the supreme sympathy, are gone. The 
fatal " never !" rings out in his ears again and again. 
Love has pronounced, lovingly but beyond appeal, 
" guilty of eternal sin." 

Or again. A man sins against purity, or honor, 
or truth, or duty to club or country or the exact- 
ing sentiment of soldiers. The world cites the cul- 
prit before its tribunal, and in summing up practi- 
cally speaks to this effect : " Prisoner at the bar, the 
world pronounces you guilty — of having been found 
out. You have been suspected of doing — indeed, 
you have been known — to do such things. You 
are well-off and in a good position ■ and, of course, 
the world never minded. It drank your wine and 
enjoyed your parties. But now you have been found 
out, and the world, which never cared a farthing 
really about you or what you did, pronounces upon 
you a severe sentence. Out of the sunshine and the 
softness ; out of the mirth and the music ; out of 
the sustained stateliness of daily life — go where you 



150 PEIilAET CONVICTIONS 

can. The court ventures upon one suggestion. Sui- 
cide is an ugly word. Theatrical suicide upon the 
grave of a mother or of a mistress is in bad form ; 
it is exciting, perhaps, but it is ungentlemanlike. 
There might, however, be little objection if some 
night, when the steamer which carries you to obliv- 
ion is plunging along at the rate of twenty knots 
an hour, you were to slip over the rails into the 
green water, where no eye shall see the last bubble 
of your convulsive agony. This, however, the-world 
(whose perfect indifference I represent) leaves en- 
tirely to your own judgment. All I can tell you is 
that you must put away all hope of pardon. You 
may devote yourself to deeds of philanthropy, or 
weep until your heart breaks, or do such acts of 
heroism upon a field of battle that tears shall run 
down the soldiers' cheeks while they raise ringing 
cheers. Society finds you guilty of an ' eternal sin.' " 

It has been said that no amount of proof can 
overcome the obstinate belief of the human heart 
that all punishment is restorative, and that restora- 
tion lies at some immeasurable distance before all. 

There are, no doubt, passages which do seem to 
speak of a restoration of all in Christ. Certainly 
there are many considerations which soften the in- 
tolerable severity of the teaching of our fathers — 
the vast number of the redeemed ; the degrees of 
punishment ; undefined possibilities of change for 
the better; the wonderful love of Christ. I can 
blame no man whose fears are softened by a hope, 
and whose hope goes up in a prayer. 

Still, let us face the truth. 



PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 151 

That all punishment is in itself simply restorative 
is surely the amiable fallacy of a humanitarian so- 
ciety. Punishment is partly exemplary also. Eut 
it has surely an element which is purely penal — vin- 
dictive, if the word must be used, but with a Divine 
vindictiveness. And this seems to be the confession 
of the human heart in the most differing states of 
society. An Indian judge tells of the impression 
produced by a thief who cut off a child's wrists 
merely to get some tightly fastened bracelets. As 
the maimed stumps were held up in court, a hun- 
dred voices cried, " Death is not enough." In the 
south of France a monster amused herself with her 
paramour at the theatre, while her little boy was 
found slowly starved to death, with his cheek laid 
against a little dog which nestled close to him. 
Many cried, " The priests are right ; there must be a 
hell." These extreme cases make us perceive that 
there is an unexhausted necessity for punishment 
merely as penal, felt by the instinctive conscience 
of mankind to be due to certain conditions and de- 
grees of sin, where restoration through it is evidently 
neither expected nor indeed hoped for. 
. ISTo doubt, we cannot understand how any soul can 
be deaf forever to a love so great as that of God. 
And j^et what has been said proves at least that we 
cannot completely trust our codification of the Di- 
vine law. Our guesses of the character of God may 
lead us to universal restoration ; our knowledge of 
His natural government of society, and of the nature 
of man, as well as the discoveries of revelation, place 
it among our Primary Convictions that there is such 
a thin^ 1 as eternal sin. 



NOTE 



Bishop Butler has attempted to invalidate the argument 
against the final punishment of souls created for happiness by 
the supposed analogy of waste (i. e. of defeated ends) in nature. 

" That the present world does not actually become a state of 
moral discipline to many, even to the generality (i. e. that they 
do not improve or grow better in it), cannot be urged as proof 
that it was not intended for moral discipline, by any who at 
all observe the analogy of nature. For, of numerous seeds of 
vegetables and bodies of animals who are adapted and put in 
the way to improve to such a point or state of natural maturity 
and perfection, we do not see perhaps that one in a million 
does. . . . Yet no one (who does not deny all final causes) will 
deny that those seeds and bodies which do attain to the point 
of maturity and perfection answer the end for which they were 
really designed by nature ; and that therefore that nature de- 
signed them for such perfection." * 

But the "unaccountableness"is entirely removed by a wider 
knowledge of nature. This was perceived even in Butler's time, 
by Bishop Berkeley, and has been irresistibly proved by subse- 
quent thinkers. "Oar taxing the waste as an imprudence by 
the Author of Nature is the effect of prejudice contracted by 
our familiarity with impotent and saving mortals." f " The 



* He adds, though not to the present purpose, that the appearance 
of such an amazing waste in nature by foreign causes is as unaccount- 
able as what is much more terrible, the present and future ruin of so 
many moral agents by themselves. — " Analogy," chap. v. p. 4. 

\ Bishop Berkeley, "Principles of Human Knowledge," § 153. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 153 

splendid profusion of natural things should not be interpreted 
as weakness or prodigality in the agent who produces them." * 
" Dison-nous que la floraison exuberante est une erreur de la 
nature ? La nature est prodigue parce qu'elle est riche, et non 
parce qu'elle est folle." t 

Many general ends of a higher character are secured by the 
" irrepressible rush of life," by the " vital elasticity of nature " 
— the continuance of species in trying seasons ; the waste, e. g., 
of the vegetable world in germs that miss development turned 
to the profit of the sentient world ; the beauty of color and 
sweetness of scent, impossible without lavish and ungrudging 
production of germs.J 



* Bishop Berkeley, "Principles of Human Knowledge," § 153. 

f Madame Dudevant, "Nouvelles Lettres d'un Voyageur," Lettre III. 
" Le Pays des Anemones," p. 40. (Euvres, Paris, 1877. 

% See the splendid passage in Martineau's " Study of Religion," vol. i. 
bk. ii. chap. i. pp. 346-355. The writer has elsewhere tried to express 
his thought in another shape. The following verses appeared in the 
Spectator a few years ago. 

THE HEREAFTER 

[The writer's purpose cannot be fairly judged without taking into 
account the whole collection of these sonnets on " The Hereafter."] 

I. — THE DEISTS ON ETERNAL PUNISHMENT 1 
Finite offence, infinite punishment! 
Xo other finite works out infinite. 
And what is sin ? Full often to the light 
Of life's main sea merely a shadow lent 
From a thin cloud — a momentary bent 
Of wills not adamant in their own despite 
Hastily touch'd ; on shields of argent white 
A blur avenged by deep self-discontent. 
Cruel the creeds that disproportionate 
To transitory sin eternal fire ; 

Condemn'd by love's great logic that forgives, 
By all the helplessness of human lives, 

1 Chubb, Toland, Tindall of All Souls', Lord Herbert of Cherbury. 



154 PKIMAKY COISTVICTIONS 

By all the Fatherhood our hearts desire, 
By all Christ's sweet anathemas of hate. 

II. — ETERNAL SIN 1 
" A sin that passes !" Lo, one sad and high, 
Bearing a taper stately like a queen, 
Talks in her sleep — " Will these hands ne'er be clean ?" 
" What's done cannot be undone." She walks by 
As she must walk thro' her eternity, 

Bearing within her that which she hath been. 
" The sin that I have sinn'd is but one scene, 
Life is a manifold drama," so men cry. 
Alas ! the shadow follows thee too well 
The interlude outgrows its single part, 
And every other voice is stricken dumb. 
That which thou carriest to the silent dell 
Is the eternal sin thou hast become. 
The everlasting tragedy thou art ! 

III. — FREEWILL 
If God be love, will He not cause His sun 

Of happiness one day its beams to thrust 

Alike upon the just and the unjust, 
His silver rain to fall on every one ? 
Not highest to the highest bliss alone, 2 

Nor dearest love that loves because it must, 

Nor trust much trusted if constrain'd to trust. 
What, when the battle of our lives is done, 
Hath God reserved for His peculiar prize ? 

The willing, undivided human soul. 

Were hearts unwilling forced to will God's will, 
For them, unfreely freed, mere lucid skies 

Their home would be, love's self a harsh control, 
And half the Heav'n's long music lose its thrill. 

1 Dr. Pusey's " What is of Faith," etc. ? Bishop Martensen's " Chris- 
tian Dogmatics." " Guilty of an eternal sin " is the true reading of 
Mark iii. 29. 

2 Butler's " Analogy." 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 155 



IV. — CONJECTURAL HOPE — THE UXIVERSALISTS 
Yet after all we cry, Shall God devise 

No way to bring His banish'd ones again ? 

Shall there not some aspersion of sweet rain 
Fall on those faded faces, those hard eyes ? 
Shall not a sudden tenderness surprise 

Their hearts with its relief, as babies drain 

With their soft lips away the mother's pain, 
As in a great grief sometimes madness dies ? 
I bear no certain news of their estate — 

Ofttimes is utter silence ; then comes much 

Obscurely prophesying some wondrous touch 
Of love's soft hand and of her silver key. 
But ever in the distance a "Too late!" 

Dies as among dark hills a moaning sea. 

V. — THE HOPE OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
Methought a dear one came from death's retreat : 
The pale presentment of his face was thin. 
Ruin sat grayly there, a shadow of sin. 
Fire needed none, nor any such red beat 
Of rain as soak'd Canute's snow winding-sheet; 
Only the recollection that can win 
No pause, the footsteps that cannot pass in, 
The restless recollection, the tired feet. 
" Thou art not happy ?" and- he answered, " No !" 
"Come to me! Jesus sakh," I made reply. 

" Hast thou not part in that, though so forlorn ?" 
" Yes ; but the time is long, and my feet slow." 
He spake, and with a faint immortal sigh, 

Left me — yet hope grew thro' the gray of morn. 

VI.— HOPE AGAIN 
The far-off darkness that we cannot pierce, 

Seen distant when we reach the other side, 

By love's light shall be over-canopied. 
Far off shall rise above all temporal curse, 
Above all falling-off from fair to worse, 



156 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

Above all death, the Church-song yet untried ; 
So that no surface discords then shall hide 
The under harmony of the universe. 
So, poised immeasurably high, the lark - 

O'er fields of battle, upturn'd faces white, 
Sings her heart out above the redden'd sod 
Thro' miles that stretch away in gold to God ; 
So a far town of dim lamps in the dark 
Constructs itself a coronal of light. 

VII.— VICTEIX DELECTATIO 1 
An ocean child lived on a northern strand 

In a hut — bent-thatch'd, blown around with foam. 

One found and bore him to a lovely home, 
Folded in a sweet valley far inland. 
The boy's heart pointed seaward, as a wand 

Points to hid fountains. Once he chanc'd to roam 

Till he clomb upward to a mountain dome : 
Far off he saw a blue speck tremulous spann'd 
By azure sky. " The sea, the sea !" he cried, 

Weeping ; for sorely he had missed the dawn, 
The movement and the music of the tide. 

Who loves it once in love for aye shall be 

With the victorious sweetness of the sea, 

Its long, strange, sweet sighs slowly backward drawn. 

VIII.— THE SAME 
Spiritual ocean, measurelessly broad ! 

Who loves thee once truly shall evermore 

Be drawn to thee, fair sea without a shore ! 
Surely and indeclinably, not overawed, 
Not overmastered (for such force were fraud 

Where sweet love is in question) : conqueror 

Of these our human hearts when they are sore, 
The true friend's suasion truly doth persuade — 

1 St. Augustine's doctrine in his various writings on Grace. See also 
Fenelon's " Lettres," especially those which close the second volume of 
the " ffiuvres Spirituelles." 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 157 

The touch'd heart at thy magic moves, blue tide ! 
Thine own victorious sweetness draws us nigher. 
There is no fragrance and no fall like thine. 
They by thine ancient beauty who abide, 
Spirits emancipated, see no fire 

But that of rose and cold which is divine. 



discussion IDA 



Delivered in substance in the Church of the Heavenly Rest, Sunday, 
March 27th, 1892 



FIFTH PRIMARY CONVICTION 

" The heavens declare the glory of God. . . . The law of the 
Lord is perfect." — Ps. xix. 1-7. 

Many as they hear or read these words are re- 
minded of a once-famous passage of Kant. 

" There are two things," said the philosopher, 
" which fill me with an ever-growing amazement — 
the starry heavens and the moral law. The specta- 
cle of the first annihilates man's importance. The 
second elevates infinitely his worth as an intelli- 
gence and a personality. Its imperative makes, and 
can make, no compromise with necessity." 

But law in the passage before us is concerned 
with the written law. The Psalm may without 
impropriety be styled the lyric of the Thorah, of 
the Bible (as we should say in our day). 

It may be asked why we still, after centuries of 
criticism, accept the heading of the 19th Psalm in 
our authorized version — " The creatures show God's 
glory ; the word, His grace." Can we still exclaim 
with Bacon, " Thy creatures have been my book. 
Thy Scriptures more. I have sought Thee in the 
gardens ; I have found Thee in the Temple" ? 

I propose to show some reasons why we receive 
the collection of books called the Bible as excep- 
tional ; why a belief that " the Holy Ghost speaks 
11 



162 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

by the prophets," and that His influence in some 
form or degree pervades both Testaments, is among 
the Primary" Convictions of Christians. 

In the line of argument which I am about to 
pursue I wish to keep almost entirely clear of tech- 
nical criticism, with its mass of details. If an} T of 
us feel at all perplexed, I would remind him that 
a critic so advanced as Professor Driver has sol- 
emnly declared that the conclusions of the Higher 
Criticism, for which proof can be offered, conflict 
neither with the Christian creeds nor with the arti- 
cles of the Christian faith. " Those conclusions," he 
says, " affect not the fact of revelation, but only its 
form. They imply no change in respect of the Di- 
vine attributes revealed in the New Testament, no 
change in the lessons of human duty to be derived 
from it, no change as to the general position (the 
interpretation of particular passages apart) that 
the Old Testament points forward prophetically to 
Christ." I speak, then, to-day, partly to such 
younger clergymen as may be perplexed by their 
own thoughts or by the questions of educated mem- 
bers of their flocks, who practically ask themselves, 
" What am I entitled as an honest man to say to 
these inquiring spirits ? Why do I receive, why am 
I justified in inviting others to receive, the Bible as 
an entirely exceptional book?" ISTow, at the very 
outset, I would implore all Christians not to meet 
inquirers in two ways — not by declamation against 
the blasphemy of such questions ; not by angry, and 
just possibly ignorant, invective against the Higher 
Criticism. A man may be a good Christian, he 



PRMAEY CONVICTIONS 163 

may be able to do a great work for God, with little 
Greek and less Hebrew. But his goodness does not 
make him a scientific critic any more than passion- 
ate justice necessarily makes a man a sound lawyer. 
He who has little Greek and less Hebrew puts him- 
self out of court at once with serious inquirers by 
talking of that which he does not possess the means 
of investigating. Nor, again, should we be other- 
wise than very cautious in speaking bitterly against 
reason — unsanctified reason, as it is often called. 
He who speaks against reason is not unjustly "sus- 
pected of feeling that reason is against him. There 
are few things more worthy of study in Bishop But- 
ler's "Analogy" than his treatment of reason. "I 
express myself with caution," he says in one place, 
" lest I should be mistaken to vilify reason, which is 
the only faculty we have wherewith to judge con- 
cerning anything, even revelation itself." Again: 
"Season should be taught to judge not only of the 
meaning but also of the morality and the evidences 
of revelation." Once more : " This observation is, I 
think, unquestionably true and of the very utmost 
importance ; but it is urged, as I hope will be under- 
stood, with great caution of not vilifying the faculty 
of reason, which is the candle of the Lord within us." 
"What reasonable answer, then, can we give to those 
who ask us Avhy we still receive the Bible as an en- 
tirely exceptional book ? 

I 

Part of the Old Testament is a miracle in writing 
— Messianic prophecy. We have authentic means 



164 PKIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

of learning the effect which this argument had in 
the records of the past. Many Jews who lived close 
to the time of Christ were convinced by it. The 
great cities of the Roman Empire had Jewish colo- 
nies — some of them, like that of Alexandria, vast in- 
deed. These Jews had synagogues and sacred books. 
The missionaries of the Cross came to such communi- 
ties. Their first appeal was to the prophetic books. 
The missionary seemed to step up to an easel. For 
those whom he addressed he pointed to a pictured 
form. Many hands had wrought upon it. The idea 
was one. Moses, or some one he assumed to be 
Moses, bestowed upon it a prophet's visionary gaze. 
David, or some one he assumed to be David, gave it 
that royal look. Isaiah, or some one assumed to be 
Isaiah, developed the martyr-figure. One such mis- 
sionary sermon is summarized for us, and its effect 
is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles — " To him 
give all the prophets witness . . . while Peter yet 
spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them 
which heard the word." * 

But, it may be said, here was an audience spe- 
cially prepared, and the effects such as cannot be re- 
produced in modern circumstances ; the scene is too 
distant and the field too wide for ordinary investiga- 
tors. I would ask those who have any doubt how 
to answer our question to turn to a passage in the 
Old Testament which has brought so many inquirers 
to the foot of the Cross, from the Ethiopian treasurer 
of Candace down to the profligate Rochester. The 



* See note on p. 181. 



PEniAKY CONVICTIONS 165 

passage is that which speaks of the sufferings of the 
elect Servant of God. Form and feature tell of the 
sufferings too eloquently well. "His visage was so 
marred more than any man, and His form more than 
the sons of men." He is like some tree, lowly indeed, 
yet ever growing, bathed in the sunshine of God's 
presence. " He shall grow up before Him as a ten- 
der plant, and as a root out of a dry ground." Shame 
is his portion. " He was despised, and we esteemed 
Him not." But there is more than suffering. Each 
grief in the long, pathetic history of human anguish 
can trust Him and make Him its confidant. " A man 
of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." He did not 
agonize for Himself alone. " He hath borne our 
griefs, and carried our sorrows. The Lord hath made 
to meet on Him the iniquity of us all." He was 
judged, condemned, put to death, "taken from prison 
and from judgment," " cut off out of the land of the 
living." Yet, though brought to the very dust of 
death, He is lifted to the stars of heaven. " Glory 
broadens from the plunge of death," multitudes own 
His gentle sway. " He shall see His seed, He shall 
prolong His days," " He shall see of the travail of 
His soul, and shall be satisfied : by His knowledge 
shall My righteous servant justify many." The 
force of the argument derivable from this well- 
known passage may be illustrated in this way : Let 
us suppose an amethyst, with cipher, crest, and let- 
ters cut upon it. Through the uncut portion of the 
stone these tracings can be seen, though dimly and 
brokenly. But let the amethyst be turned, and the 
engraver's intention can be distinctly perceived. So 



166 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

with the semi-transparent amethyst of prophecy. 
Seen from the uncut side the engraving may have 
been obscure. But now, by the -event, the other 
side is turned to us. There is the outline of the 
Cross, the cipher of the Saviour, engraved five hun- 
dred and fifty years before the time of Christ. And 
here as to the main issue we may stand quite out- 
side the din of critical controversy and be indepen- 
dent of its results. A few months ago a writer in 
the Times told how the whole fabric of his faith 
collapsed when a literary friend pointed out to him 
certain differences of style between the first and the 
last parts of Isaiah. Yet who ever read that " I be- 
lieve in one prophet Isaiah " was an article of the 
Catholic faith % The whole question for our purpose 
is not how many Isaiahs there were, but when was 
that particular prophecy written ; and the answer 
of all candid criticism is that it mast have been writ- 
ten between b.c. 549 and b.c 53S. I mention this 
as a simple way of dealing with a prophecy whose 
correspondence with the history of our Lord is so 
obvious that it may be safely left to the common- 
sense of humanity. Its essential meaning is unaf- 
fected by modern criticism. One such passage (and 
there are others) gives an impress to the collection 
of which it forms a part. 

II 

The second point to be remarked is that, hetero- 
geneous as the " sacred library " may appear to be, 
there is a unity of purpose running all through it. 
The Hexateuch may be a compilation. All the Old 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 167 

Testament, as history, may be compilation. " The 
Hebrew historiographer," as we know him, says an 
eminent critic, "is essentially a compiler or rear- 
ranger of pre-existing documents ; he is not himself 
an original author." The psalms which David com- 
posed may be many or eight or fewer or one or 
none. The revision of Ezra may have wrought 
strange things. Koheleth and canticles, a sceptical 
treatise and an amatory idyl, may have been thrust 
in between pious books, like the songs of Moore or 
the pessimisms of Schopenhauer into a collection of 
hymns and tracts. 

But the fact of an ever - advancing movement, 
moral and spiritual, towards Christ in the whole col- 
lection cannot be denied. 

Many and distressing objections on moral grounds 
are taken to much of the Old Testament. When 
such objections are advanced, there are three con- 
siderations to be borne in mind. (1) What may be 
called the onwardness of the Old Testament. When 
we are confronted with such objections, we should 
ask ourselves whether the things objected to form 
part of that progressive system, taken at a point 
short of its completion. If a teacher of consummate 
wisdom devised a system of education for young 
men, say from sixteen to twenty-two or twenty- 
three years of age, w T ould it be just to preserve the 
exercise written at seventeen, and criticise the whole 
system adversely on the hypothesis of that exercise 
being the matured product of the education which 
was not to end for years after? Taken under the 
condition which I have stated, the things objected 



168 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

to must seem, and must be, imperfect. (2) The Old 
Testament contains the pathology and diagnosis of 
sin. Its therapeutics are in the- Gospel. Do the 
things excepted to form part of this pathology? 
If so, they are necessarily there, and necessarily re- 
volting. The history of Scripture has two leading 
ideas and two capital events. The ideas are Sin 
and Redemption ; the facts are the Fall and the In- 
carnation. What required Redemption ? Sin. But 
sin is a revolution in the moral order, and, like other 
revolutions, is " not made with rose-water." Hence 
the narrative of the Fall is soon succeeded by others 
as painful as can be found in history — the terrible 
sin of Lot, and the hideous story of the Cities of the 
Plain. The leaves that hung for a while like rain- 
bows upon the tree even in the autumn of the fall 
are dinted into the clay and perforated by the worm. 
Some critics can point to chapters in Leviticus which, 
one of them says, are " filthy litanies ; hideously cyn- 
ical." 'Now, these passages not merely enable us to 
understand the command to exterminate the Cana- 
anites. They show us what sin is at its very worst. 
"What should we say if a medical writer omitted some 
repulsive features of a disease in deference to the 
susceptibilities of certain persons into whose hands 
his book might come ? Such records are necessary 
in a history of the Fall and the Redemption, if we 
are to believe the one and to justify the other. At 
all events, how different is the real Book from the 
book which man would have manufactured ! Had 
we invented it, it would all have been as noble as 
some portions of it unquestionably are. It would 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 169 

have been a following of saints and martyrs, with 
the cross on their shoulders and the glory on their 
brows, over the glacier and through the cloud, to the 
Throne of God. Humanity as represented in those 
pages would not merely sing some sweet notes of 
aspiration, like the lark upon the fresh sod in his 
cage. It would escape from the prison, and warble 
until lost in depths of blue. At the least and low- 
est, it would represent perfect penitence with its 
victorious tears and splendid deeds of reparation. 
But the Bible, if divine, is yet " divine with imper- 
fections of our life." Its pages are blistered with 
tears and dripped with blood. Nay, they are some- 
times splashed with mud. For sin is vulgar as well 
as awful. If it towers at times until it covers us 
with majestic shadows from awful heights, there are 
seasons when it grovels in the dust in its mean- 
ness. (3) But, after all, it is chiefly Christ who is 
our stay. " Think not that I am come to destroy 
the law, or the prophets : I am not come to destroy, 
but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven 
and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise 
pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." He who said 
that knew the Old Testament. It was present to 
Him not only as a literature or a history, but with a 
personal recollection. It was known with a person- 
al consciousness. It was lighted by memory as well 
as by thought. We talk of the extermination of the 
Canaanites. Are we gentler than He ? "We are of- 
fended by the polygamy of the patriarchs. Can we 
survey marriage with a purer gaze than that of the 
virgin eye which is also the eye of God? We take 



170 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

the Book as it is from the hand of Him who says, 
" I am the Truth." 

And here it may be considered how reasonable 
it is to accept expositions of prophecy given by our 
Lord and His apostles. Authors of vast and com- 
manding eminence call for a corresponding criticism. 
Books of genius demand the interpretation of genius. 
There are writers whom men almost instinctively 
feel to be colossal. They see that there is in cer- 
tain works a vast stretch of far-off glory. But they 
cannot map the mountain until some strong climber 
has wrested the key from the giant's hand. Thus, 
if any one could have asked Coleridge, before his 
residence in Germany, whether " Lear " and " Ham- 
let " touched the highest pinnacle of human genius, 
he would unhesitatingly have answered " Yes." Yet, 
before his interview with Lessing, he could not fully 
have given a reason for his belief. The loftiest proph- 
ecy outside the range of inspiration needs an inter- 
preter of the same country and speaking the same 
lofty language. We need not, then, be surprised if 
sacred inspiration needs an interpreter in its own 
order, if we are called upon to refer to the herme- 
neutics of the Master of Prophecy and of His school. 

Finally, let us remind inquirers that to grasp the 
meaning of the Old Testament we must study it in 
its proper light. Thus, there is no book of the Bible 
so obviously open to objection as Leviticus, with its 
frightful record of the most abject sins of a degraded 
humanity. But once study the book in its proper 
light, establish it in its whole divine connection, and 
how many of the objections are at once cleared away ! 



PBTMABY CONVICTIONS 171 

Sacrifice and sin are its two dominant ideas. The 
Levitical sacrifices represented, each singly, some 
separate aspect ; taken together, the completed idea 
of sacrifice. The sin-offering pointed to the atone- 
ment, the burnt-offering to consuming self-devotion, 
the meat-offering and drink-offering to an exhibi- 
tion of the sacrifice in visible elements of bread and 
wine, the peace-offering to the eucharistic feast of 
joy upon the offered sacrifice. Thus we have four 
ideas — expiation, devotion, representation, union. 
The regulations of the law express, doubtless with 
details which the divine delicacy of the Gospel has 
made repulsive to Christians, the defilement which 
sin inflicts upon man through the whole range of 
human life, 3 r et with the hope of restoration. Our 
birth, our food, our sickness, our death, our marriage 
— all are deeply stained with sin as well as with 
misery. AYe learn that our birth needs to be hal- 
lowed, our food to be sanctified, our diseases charmed 
into the sweet harmony of health, our death swal- 
lowed up in victory ; that our marriage should be- 
come the purification of passion and the discipline 
of love. Sin is treated throughout in words that 
express Divine anger and human loathing. Trans- 
gressions — alas! still not unknown — are marked 
Avith the hot branding-iron of God's wrath. The 
earth itself sickens with their ignominy. " The land 
itself vomiteth out her inhabitants," "as it spewed 
out the nations that were before you." Sursum 
corcla be our motto — and Leviticus itself may be- 
come full of holy lessons. 



172 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

III 

"We are asked why we receive the New Testa- 
ment. I believe it to be an error to suppose that, 
as a matter of fact, our first or only knowledge of 
Christ and of His claim upon us is derived from that 
sacred volume, I cannot see the faintest indication 
in the ISTew Testament itself that such a thing was 
ever contemplated by our Lord or by His apostles. 
We are convinced that Jesus lives and is our Lord 
by reasons which do not lie exclusively within the 
cover of any book, however sacred. The existence 
of the vast body called the Church ; the unbroken 
continuance of the sacraments, because instituted by 
Jesus, implying, as they do, His life and presence ; 
the observance of the Lord's Day, with its witness to 
His resurrection ; the earliest creed, with slight and 
not very important variations used from the begin- 
ning of Christianity, apparently long before the can- 
on of the ISTew Testament Scripture was fixed ; the 
complex phenomenon compendiously called Christen- 
dom ; Christian ideas, influences, traditions, homes, 
families, communities, states — these bear an abiding 
witness to Christ. But when a man is so far con- 
vinced as to Christ, belief in the ISTew Testament as 
a whole necessarily follows. Christ lives and acts 
upon His Church, and upon every member of it. 
But if He does not act visibly and audibly, there 
must be some authentic record of Him less misty 
and indefinite than the vagueness of tradition; more 
life-like, more expanded, more colored than the sum- 
mary lines of a creed. The Christian is one who 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 173 

enters into personal relation with Christ. But rela- 
tion to a living Christ must be conditioned by knowl- 
edge of an historical Christ. Without this the Church 
would go to ruin, for if an alien feature were intro- 
duced into the authoritative representation, a dis- 
torted Christianity would result from a distorted 
Christ. A living Christ must, therefore, have a true 
history, and that is to be found only in the evan- 
gelists. JSiO other candidates are in the field. 

Certain inferences follow. 

The first regards the view, of the verbal structure 
of the Gospels which we are forced by truth to 
take. The " informal character " of those memoirs is 
brought out hy the very nature of the leading ideas 
by which they are pervaded. Our Lord's words are 
not given either in their original language (except a 
few broken words chiefly in St. Mark) or apparent- 
ly in a version of them which is literally and abso- 
lutely accurate. The spirit of them is preserved in 
the highest degree. But we have different versions 
of the same words with a view to the evangelists' 
chief purpose. Events are not generally narrated in 
exact chronological sequence. We cannot help feel- 
ing that, in some one narrative, one evangelist has 
more profoundly grasped and more thoroughly co- 
ordinated the circumstances than the others. Thus, 
we have not one perfect and unbroken record of the 
earthly life of the Saviour, but four different photo- 
graphs, " four different projections," which each soul 
has to reproduce for itself. Are there no minute in- 
accuracies % Are we forced by preconceived theo- 
ries to suppose, for instance, that the truth of the 



174 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

Gospel depends upon cramming each, of the words 
in the four titles over the cross, given by the four 
evangelists, into one connected form, from which no 
syllable is wanting? Two principles appear to be 
certain : (1) The revelation in Holy Scripture is nec- 
essarily contained in words and sentences. "The 
law speaks with the tongue of the children of men." 
The medium which it employs and the persons whom 
it addresses are alike imperfect. It is the approxi- 
mation of divine thought to human intellect and 
feeling. It is not, it cannot be, exclusively divine. 
(2) But if not exclusively divine, it is so sufficiently 
for the ends which it contemplates. As regards the 
Gospels, with which we are now concerned, Jesus 
founded a society. The peculiarity of the members 
of that society is that they are spiritually like Him ; 
that His words and works are the rule and model, 
the very breath of their existence. The life of each 
true Christian is a small replica, the Church a great 
one, of His. But if (as experience proves) Jesus is 
not visible and audible, if .the Spirit uses Christ's 
words and deeds as the necessary condition of His 
action, the Church must have a substantially true 
and faithful image of His human life, teaching, and 
conduct. Either the Gospels are in their language 
and structure inspired and divine sufficiently up to 
this point and for this purpose ; or, if not, this false 
image would project a false shadow. False Gospels 
would make a false Church. But the experience of 
nineteen centuries proves that the Church has this, 
and with this, all necessary for it. 

The argument from Church authority comes in to 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 175 

confirm us. That argument, I think, may be placed 
in a light more congenial to unecclesiastical intel- 
lects in this form. We are told that we cannot 
show how the sacred canon was formed ; that dif- 
ferent canons were adopted in different Churches ; 
that the writers of the books themselves did not in 
all cases claim any such character as that with which 
they have been invested. I will not here insist upon 
the formal decisions of councils in Churches, though 
they have their own weight. But surely there is 
also such a thing as the spontaneous informal au- 
thority of the Church. We know that a sure tact 
guides the judgment in literature, even in poetry. 
It is the combined, inextinguishable, permanent, 
irrevocable verdict of human feeling and criticism. 
The " Iliad," the " Antigone " and " Agamemnon," 
"Lear" and "Macbeth," Tennyson's Arthurian cycle 
— the common consent of all humanity which is ca- 
pable of knowing and feeling — makes us certain that 
these works are immortal and supreme. Why need 
it appear incredible that in another sphere the di- 
vinely guided judgment of all human spirits which 
are conformed to Christ's image should set a stamp 
upon the writings of the New Testament ? It may be 
objected that for a time and in particular Churches 
inferior works were adopted. True, but admiration 
of paste and glass is ephemeral ; that of the gem is 
abiding. 

Finally, we may well point out that the character 
of the New Testament writings justifies the Church. 
It does so intellectually. Thus, in the Epistle to the 
Colossians a great critic, after years of study, comes 



176 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

to the conclusion that not one single word in the 
epistle is without its distinct significance. A critic 
of equal rank tells us that, in what are apparently 
the highest flights of rhetoric in the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, each element is carefully adjusted, and 
offers results of deep thought in unsurpassed sim- 
plicity. We remark, too, how the genuine books of 
the ]S T ew Testament are never committed to an ab- 
surdity or a contradiction. Thus, the epistle of St. 
Clement, received for a time in some Churches as 
Scripture, argues from the phoenix in favor of the 
resurrection of the bod} r . The Church, with its di- 
vine sobriety, ultimately felt that the hall-mark of 
heaven was wanting here. The epistle of Barnabas 
hovered for a period upon the verge of the canon. 
Its fanciful triviality would have been a poor con- 
trast to the splendid sweep and divine depth of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews. Let me acid one instruct- 
ive contrast from the Apocryphal Gospels. In the 
" Acta Pilati " (xi. 2), the writer boldly says that 
"there was an eclipse of the sun." The instinct 
of historical veracity, if nothing higher, saved the 
evangelists from a statement which modern science 
would have absolutely refuted. Gibbon's ponderous 
merriment arises from unacquaintance with the phe- 
nomena of earthquakes as known to modern seismol- 
ogists and from a superficial study of the evangelists. 
Nothing in the Gospels expresses or implies more 
than the "seismic darkness," the well-known ac- 
companiment of earthquakes. All other literature 
palls upon the palate of time. Its vital juices are 
desiccated, and it ceases to be nutritious. Classical 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 177 

literature may be getting into this position. The 
very perfection of the commentaries ends the edu- 
cational life of the text. How different with the 
New Testament ! Strauss and Eenan have only 
opened new aspects of the Gospel. The figure of 
Jesus stands out lovelier and more sublime. It is 
found that eighteen centuries have been gazing into 
the depths of His words without exhausting their 
meaning. So with the epistles. At the Eeforma- 
tion there was a revival of their study ; in our 
fathers' days and in our own a new moss -growth 
of scholasticism covered their study. Now, again, 
a new and reverent criticism finds in them new life 
and new meaning. But other writings, it may be 
said, are inspired also ; the two covers of the Testa- 
ment are not " a jail to coop the living God." As a 
much-loved American poet says — 

" Slowly the Bible of the race is writ. 
Each age, each kindred, adds a text to it. 
While mists the mountain shroud, 
While thunder surges burst on cliff of cloud, 
Still at the prophet's feet the nations sit." 

Yes ; but the texts are dark and the prophets are 
obscure. The voices are broken, indefinite. We 
want voices not drowned by the roar of the sea nor 
coming out of the mists, not far off, but very near 
to us. For all these reasons we may fling out our 
banner with hands that do not tremble. " The word 
of God is true." 

They are but the shrivelled snail-shells of which 
the Psalmist speaks that are lying broken round us. 
The Bock of Ages is under our feet. 
12 



178 PEIMAET CONVICTIONS 

I close my subject with two considerations. (1) 
Let us remember what has occurred in another field 
of knowledge. That teaches us that startling con- 
clusions, even when much more fully proved than 
critical conjecture adverse to Scripture, need cause 
no panic among Christians. A Cambridge man of 
science,* about fifty years ago, drew lessons from 
the history of Galileo, which he applied to the then 
rising sciences of geology and biology. His argu- 
ment may be summarized in three memorable prop- 
ositions. First, the meaning put on Scripture in 
any age is determined by the received philosophy of 
that age. Men of ardent mind often seem to them- 
selves to be fighting for revelation when they are 
only contending for their own interpretation of 
it, which interpretation has been derived from the 
dominant school of their own age. Secondly, the 
new interpretation required by the new spirit when 
it has established itself in the educated mind is 
found to be entirely without danger to the faith. 
Thirdly, those who have proved themselves too 
tenacious of the old explanation are censured by 
those who follow them. It is clearly seen that there 
is no gain in binding Scripture to exploded physical 
theories, but very much the reverse. It is, as Kep- 
ler said, chopping iron with an axe, which effectu- 
ally prevents it from chopping wood for the future. 
These observations apply with equal force to those 
conclusions of critical scholarship which are found 
to be solidly established. There are, no doubt, pious 



* Dr. Whewell. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 179 

but ill-informed people who say, " Every syllable, 
every iota, every statement within the covers of my 
English Bible is equally certain, equally infallible, 
equally inspired. Unless it be so I shall lose my 
faith. I shall have no revelation at all, and be lost 
in a sea of doubt." A man might about as reason- 
ably refuse a check because the paper on which it 
was written was crumpled, or decline to receive a 
letter from his father full of tenderness and wisdom 
because the soakage of salt-water through the mail- 
bags had spotted it with brine. (2) We should dis- 
tinguish between the great facts of faith and the- 
ories about them. The creeds of the Church state 
the great facts of Creation ; of the Holy Ghost 
speaking by the prophets ; of the Atonement. But 
they abstain from a theory of any of the three — and 
theories about them cause infinitely more difficulty 
than the facts. 

The plan of these Discussions leads me only to 
the general acceptance of Scripture among our Pri- 
mary Convictions as Christians, and to the discrimi- 
nation of that acceptance from a rash entanglement 
of the fact of the inspiration with a theory about 
the mode and extent of that inspiration. 

But I do wish to lament that we read the Bible 
too little as our fathers read it, devotionally and as 
in the Presence of God. 

In a beautiful — I believe still unpublished — letter 
of Shelley, which I have had the opportunity of 
reading, he writes : " There are two Italys. One is 
of the green earth, the transparent seas, the old 
ruins, the warm, radiant atmosphere. The other is 



180 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

of the Italians with their works and ways." We 
all know, and the world knows, how at last the 
moment came which, in such large measure, did 
away with the contrast. The things round them 
passed, after long delay, into their souls. The Ital- 
ians felt the spell and awakened to a wider life ; and 
the influence of thoughts, memories, aspirations, his- 
tory, ideas, did its proper work. 

Even so, when we place ourselves in contact with 
the Bible, even when we hear it read, we are in com- 
pany with a hidden purity, with a nobler life than 
our own — we breathe the atmosphere of heaven. 
The voice of prophets, apostles, of Jesus himself, is 
in the air. Unconsciously to ourselves we grow 
noble with the nobility of the influence. We are 
led to say with the old psalmist that " the law of 
the Lord is perfect, converting the soul." 



NOTE 



As a matter of fact, the belief that Prophecy was fulfilled in 
Jesus was so influential that Gibbon should have added it to 
the five causes for the success of Christianity in his famous 
Chapter XV. 

It may here be remarked that the chief danger of Gibbon 
lies in his general tone, and in his power of artful coutrast. He 
seldom actually falsifies ; but the frigidity of dislike, as con- 
trasted witli irrepressible regret for dying Paganism, produces a 
much subtler effect. The writer has attempted to characterize 
the spirit of Gibbon in verse elsewhere, and ventures to present 
his attempt. (The lines are taken from the Spectator, where 
they were kindly inserted a few years since.) 

SONNETS IN MY LIBRARY 

gibbon's "memoirs" 

He lived to learn ; to watch his knowledge grow ; 
Nightly to question what advance precise 
Twelve hours had given to that tide of ice. 

If passionate, passionate only to lay low 

Soul-highness, polishing his word-gems slow 
As tides work pebbles smooth, until his nice 
Sarcastic taste could say — " Let this suffice !" 

Marvel not then that to love's creed his no 

He hiss'd, and in the volume of his book 
Suspected every lily for its whiteness, 



182 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

All large heart-poetry for lack of prose. 
The Alpine majesty, the ample rose, 
The novelties of God he could not brook — 

The love that is of love the essential Brightness. 

ii 
Wherefore his picture evermore was hued 
Over with colors, peradventure fine, 
But mix'd not for a Heav'n-conceived design. 
A creed that like the sacred mountains stood 
Sunlighted depth or moonlit amplitude, 
Majestic, measureless, with trim tape-line 
Did he attempt, and scorn'd, being undivine, 
The excess divine, the tropic rain of God. 
Faith's flowers must die where heart-air is so chilly ; 
Fair must seem false when love's so little kind, 
Denying love when love is nobly new. 
The virgin's fingers fold a tarnish'd lily 
For those who scorn virginity. The blind 

Are proof against sweet proof that Heav'n is blue. 



Yet with what art, thro' what enormous space, 

With what innumerous threads how deftly plann'd, 
Silverly separate in the subtle hand, 

He winds the stories to their central place. 

Nothing so false as may such art disgrace; 
But colors here deliberately wann'd, 
There as of fabled sunsets fading grand 

Upon gray gods of high pathetic face. 

Faint thro' the laurel groves of Antioch 
The last hymn dies, and the earth's large regret 
Divinely wails thro' many a dusk-gold lawn. 

Then a stern symbol rises from the rock — 
The cross of Roman Syria grimly set, 
Leafless, dim-lit in leaden-color'd dawn. 



Discussion IDM 



SIXTH PRIMARY CONVICTION 

"I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ — God from God." 
"My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." — John v. 17. 

Theologically, as its place in the Mcene Creed 
indicates, this great conviction should have stood in 
the second place in these Discussions. But, rela- 
tively to us and our human forms of reasoning, it 
might, perhaps, come with more force after a re- 
view of the Incarnation. 

Yet it may also well follow from our conviction 
in regard, to Scripture as an entirely exceptional 
collection of boohs. Our argument in the last Dis- 
cussion dealt specially with the Gospels ; with the 
moral necessity of such a life of Christ as is con- 
tained in them, true and sufficient as to all essen- 
tials, if not free from certain conditions of limitation 
or inaccuracy involved in the very nature of human 
language. Diamoncliferous clay is clay still. 

Any adequate discussion of the witness of the 
New Testament to our Lord's Divinity would re- 
quire a volume. And the work has been splendidly 
done again and again. But, on this occasion, I wish 
to turn attention to one point, and to one only, of 
the larger field of survey. 

I think myself warranted in assuming that the 



186 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

Gospels contain a true record of our Lord's words 
as well as of His works. One single great dog- 
matic saying of His seriously misapprehended or 
distorted would distort Christianity. And I propose 
to consider what this one word of Jesus undenia- 
bly teaches about Him. 

Lord Bacon has said that it is with expositions of 
Scripture as with wines. The richest and most gen- 
erous flow from the first expression of the fruit, not 
from forcing a reluctant liquid from the squeezed- 
out and broken grapes. So the finest expositions 
of Scripture are those which come naturally and 
exuberantly from the text with its context. 

Now, in this place all flows from its connection 
with the miracle of the Bethesda as a Sabbath 
miracle, and consequently with the idea of God's 
rest. 

Jesus did not choose the miracle for the day so 
much as the day for the miracle. One leading ob- 
ject of the fourth Gospel is to let us see Jewish 
hatred gradually darkening round and over the Son 
of God. The Jews did not ask, " Who has done 
this work of sweet humanity, of tender and timely 
benevolence, which has brought relief to a sufferer, 
who has waited so long, until his frame has grown 
heavy and his hair streaked with gray?" Those 
atrabilious devotees put a very different question, 
" Who has ventured to break one of the thirty tra- 
ditional rules about the Sabbath day by bidding him 
take up his couch and carry it?" Let us see what 
our Saviour would teach of the working of the 
Father and of the Son. 



TEIMAKT COXVICTIOXS 187 

I 

Of the working of the Father, Jesus says, " My 
Father worketh hitherto." 

The Bible is a revelation of God's character. 
Some one, I believe, has called it " the romance of 
eternity"; but it shows us the romance condensed 
and made manifest in time. 

From the Bible, wisely read, we learn what God 
is not. 

He is no Epicurean God, 

" smiling over wasted lands, 
Clanging fights and burning fields and sinking ships and 
praying hands." 

He is no mechanical God, who sets the Universe 
spinning by one fillip of His finger, and then leaves 
it entirely to itself — a God of whom a philosopher 
might say justly enough, "I can afford to dispense 
with that hypothesis." God is no vague Infinite and 
Unconditional. His name is mentioned just now in 
hundreds of superfine pages with admiration. But 
admiration is always more or less patronizing, and 
patronizing God or Christ is the most awful pro- 
fanity. Let us grasp such language closely when 
we come across it ; the gold-dust will be brushed 
away from the moth's wings, and the death's-head 
of Atheism grin at us. "We may well cry out with 
^Nlebuhr, " I will have nothing to do with the God 
of the philosophers ; give me the God of the Bible 
who is heart to heart." 

But while God is thus brought close to us ; while 
Guizot could say with a measure of truth that " in 



188 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

the Bible we have, so to speak, a personal history 
of God," the Bible thoughtfully studied teaches no 
vulgar anthropomorphism. Certainly our concep- 
tion of God's attributes is drawn from that which is 
best in us. In passing up the scale to make it infi- 
nite, we are to introduce no alien or contradictory 
conception. Justice, for instance, does not pass into 
injustice, by being made infinite— and the end of the 
revelation of God's character and attributes is prac- 
tical. It is to show man his proper aim and ideal. 

Thus, in the passage before us, the work of God 
is the type of man's work, and the rest of God is 
the type of man's rest. But God rests in His work, 
and works in His rest. 

If the Jewish conception of God's rest were true, 
what would follow? Nature, it has been said, at 
once works like a machine, and rests like a dream — 

" sleeps at once and works ; 
Works — with such wondrous wheels that interlace, 
Sleeps — with such splendid dreams upon her face." 

But, if the vulgar Jewish interpretation were 
true, the tides would hush their stormy music, and 
the bubbles cease to break upon the health-giving 
spring. Our Lord's words here treat Creation as 
the spirit of modern science would lead us to do. 
The word does not mean exclusively a paroxysm of 
initiation. The old Psalmist knew better. 

" Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are created : and Thou 
renewest the face of the earth." * 



* Ps. civ. 



PKQIAKY CONVICTIONS 189 

There is a creation which is continuous, which is 
going on every minute. It was a wise motto which 
one put into the lips of Xature — "I make things 
make themselves." Precisely accordant with this 
high wisdom is the oracle of truth. Evermore, week- 
day and Sabbath, " my Father is working — even up 
to this moment." * 

II 

Jesus proceeds to place His own working exactly 
on an equality with that of the Father. 

I am not just now saying whether this teaching 
is true or false, rightly or wrongly attributed to our 
Lord. I am asking you simply to realize what it 
must mean, what only it can mean. It is of tre- 
mendous significance. 

When the disciples were accused of violating the 
Sabbath, Christ had appealed to David for a parallel 
breach of the letter of the law to subserve a higher 
end. f But when He himself is accused He appeals 
to His Father. " Evermore, continuously, is jMy 
Father working, even up to the present — and I am 
working." It has been said that "He hesitates, 
apologizes, excuses Himself." Yes ; but His apol- 
ogy is the apology of God, and His excuses are the 
creation and the Creator. 

Here, then, are two originating wills. working in 
perfect harmony to one divine event. And this is 
the teaching of St. Paul and of the author of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews quite as truly as of St. John. 



t Markii. 25. 



190 PEIMAET CONVICTIONS 

He is before all, and the whole sum. of things co- 
heres simultaneously in Him. " Being off-rayed of 
His glory and stamped copy of His substance, and 
bearing on the whole sum of things by the single 
utterance of His power." * Christ, indeed, goes on 
to say, " The Son can do nothing of Himself." But 
it is an Almighty cannot y something that He can- 
not do, because He is omnipotent. f 

2s r o Christian will fail to carry on this grand 
conception of Christ's continuous working to His 
Church and people. 

By this we measure all teaching about the Sacra- 
ments and all preaching. 

Our conception of the Sacraments will be influ- 
enced by this. 

Every party, organization, positive institution, has 
within it vitality and permanence, just in propor- 
tion as it possesses three conditions — a history, an 
idea, and a person. French imperialism has a his- 
tory of glory and of suffering. It has an idea — 
that of a democracy with a crowned form in purple 



* Heb. i. 8. <pepav in this wonderful verse is not merely- 
bearing up, " like an Atlas " ; it is bearing on, sustaining, an 
object in motion. "In the last point, the figure of Heb. i. 3 
differs from the equivalent phrase of Col. i. 17: /cat ra ivavra 
iv avTG> avvia-TrjKe. — Dean Vaughan, "Epistle to the Hebrews," 
p. 8. ' 

t Augustine points to Hebrews v?. 18 for a similar impossi- 
bility inherent in the Divine Nature. His golden words de- 
serve study : " Propterea quaedam non potest, quia omnipo- 
tens est. Dicitur omnipotens faciendo quod vult, non patiendo 
quod non vult; quod ei si accideret, nequaquam esset omnipo- 
tens."— S. August., " De C. D.," lib. v. 10. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 191 

placed by election at its head. But there remains 
to imperialism no personality considerable enough 
to give embodied life to the two other elements. 

The Sacrament of Baptism, according to some es- 
timable people, is simply in effect a sign. That is 
to say. Baptism has a history / it was instituted by 
Christ. It has an idea, the washing away of sin. 
But it is not (what the 25th article calls it) an " ef- 
fectual sign," *- i. e., a sign intended to effect that 
which it signifies. It is what the old English eccle- 
siastical law termed an " inert ornament," one not 
carried out into living work and service,. but part of 
the monumental and heraldic apparatus of the mere 
symbolical belongings of the Church. If our Mas- 
ter were dead and turned into Syrian dust, that one 
point of Baptism would stand where it does with 
them. 

The same is true of Holy Communion, if it is 
looked upon as a sign of absent grace, a mere me- 
morial of an absent Saviour. If it were that, and 
no more than that, it might truly be said that it is 
far from being the most touching and pathetic sym- 
bol which could have been selected. It has for 
those who thus feel about it a memorable history 
and a powerful idea. But it lacks the present work- 
ing of a present Christ. 

The same principle applies to preaching. In that 
which we are freely told about it at conferences 
and in newspapers there are some grains of golden 



Efficacia signa." 



192 PRIMAKY CONVICTIONS 

teratli. But much which is laid down is very ques- 
tionable. Rules are imposed. It is assumed that 
the preacher's whole conceivable object is to interest 
(a very valuable means, no doubt). Not seldom we 
are informed that the difference between good and 
bad, effective and ineffective, is to be measured by 
the difference between extempore and written. I 
should be the last to contemn the value of being 
able to look one's people straight in the face, and to 
speak right at them. But I cannot forget a certain 
sermon, mentioned in the Old Testament. It was 
neither extempore nor even original. It was taken 
down slavishly from the lips of the prophet. O 
that terrible written sermon of Baruch, Avhich burned 
and scathed like living fire ! * Brevity is also not 
unreasonably prescribed ; indeed, for mere personal 
exhortation necessarily so. Yet the greatest preach- 
ers — Liddon and Melville — have done memorable 
work with piles of manuscript upon the cushion. 
Away with posture-masters and elocution-masters, 
except those who teach us to speak distinctly. 
Genius, no doubt, makes a difference. But there is 
a more sacred and subtle fire than that of genius. 
Preaching becomes great when it is something 
more than a result of an old historical institution, 
more than conformed to the general idea of ora- 
tory—when it is the utterance of an ever-living 
Preacher, when the hearers find " a specimen 
and proof of Christ speaking in a man," when 



Jer. xxxvi. 1-13. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 193 

the preacher "as in the sight of God speaks in 
Christ," * 

One view of the great utterance which we are ex- 
amining we should guard against. I will give this 
as I have found it in the illustration of a foreign 
writer. 

¥e are told, then, that we may profitably see in 
this placef the eternal relation between the Father 
and the Word, shadowed out and pictured by the 
temporal relation between Jesus and Joseph the 
carpenter. We are not to lift up our eyes and think 
of the only-begotten Son in the bosom of the Fa- 
ther — we are to turn to a sacred scene of earth. 
We are to think of the young mechanic working in 
the little shop, until the sinking of the sun behind 
the hills allowed Him freedom from His toil, and 
all the time imitating the carpenter teacher — " able 
to do nothing of Himself, but what He saw His fa- 
ther do." 

This, no doubt, gives color to the words, and calls 
up a scene before the eyes. Is the color legitimate ? 
Is the scene in place % 

It is, I think, an instance of a fallacy of our day 
worthy of mention in our manuals of logic — the fal- 
lacy of slap-dash picturesqueness, picturesqueness at 
any price. ]S r o Christian age, perhaps, has been so 
contemptuous of dogma as this, or, perhaps, so ig- 
norant of it. Indeed, we are often told that relig- 
ion without dogma is our great want. Yet what is 



* 2 Cor. ii. 17 ; xiii. 3. 

t Especially 2 Cor. v. 19. See note on p. 197. 
13 



194 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

dogma ? The general statement of a positive relig- 
ious truth in the language of Holy Scripture, or in 
language duly authorized as equivalent to it. To say 
that religion has no dogma is to say that nothing is 
really known about it. He who pronounces the word 
God puts himself out of count .for denouncing dogma 
— for the word conveys the dogma of dogmas. 

Hearers, I repeat, insist upon the preacher's being 
interesting and picturesque. They expect to enjoy 
a scramble of scriptural lollipops, or to be thrilled 
by a burst of spiritual explosives. Yet surely teach- 
ers are bound to see that the august figure of Him 
whom they preach is not dwarfed or falsely colored 
as they play it to and fro. 

What is the definite view, the exposition which 
necessarily underlies the illustration which I have 
mentioned ? 

It is that the work of Jesus is imitation — that as 
the Man imitated the carpenter, so in His eternal 
nature and being the Son imitated the Father. 

But imitation, be it observed, is always limita- 
tion. 

So we can readily see that it is in art. 

Imitative music or song is never very high. An 
American singer gifted with a marvellous voice, in 
Handel's " Sweet Bird" makes the very wall palpi- 
tate with her notes. As she was practising, a ca- 
nary hung in her room, and kept chanting as if in 
rivalry. The singer did not imitate the bird ; other- 
wise she would have been but a mocking-bird. But 
she allowed its spirit to pass into her, and glorified 
it by her genius. 



PRIMARY CONYICTIOXS 195 

So with imitative poetry. Tennyson was sage 
and serious, the most learned of poets. He had 
studied his art. Some scent of Yirgil's flowers and 
fields is sphered in a half-line. Some ample mem- 
ory of Shakespeare is wakened by a word or two. 
Some turn of Milton's blank verse, some measure of 
Ben Jonson, some stately and various melody of 
Cowley's " Pindarics," ever and anon just tell of a 
music akin to their own ; but Tennyson is never an 
imitator. He is alwa} T s himself. 

These illustrations, drawn from spheres so much 
lower, may make my meaning clearer. 

There is nothing in this great utterance which is 
Arian or semi-Arian. The Jews full well knew 
what it meant, what it claimed. They had perse- 
cuted "and sought to slay Him, because He had 
done these things on the Sabbath day." After He 
had spoken these words they had a new charge — 
" Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill Him, 
because He not only had broken the Sabbath, but 
said also that God was His Father, making Himself 
equal with God." 

The rubric before the Xicene Creed directs that 
immediately after its recitation the sermon shall be 
delivered. A wise reminder. The sermon should 
be of the same stuff as the Creed. The sermon, 
which cannot properly nestle under one of its arti- 
cles — whether as exposition, proof, illustration, fair 
deducible or relative exhortation to belief, duty, 
or worship — had probably better not have been 
preached. 

This sermon, at all events, if it has failed in all 



196 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

else, has had direct relation to the article — " I be- 
lieve ... in one Lord Jesus Christ . . . God of God 
. . . very God of very God . . . By whom all things 
were made." If we receive the Scriptures as indi- 
cated in the last Discussion — if we believe, that 
Jesus, being what He was, spoke as is here recorded 
— for this reason alone, if there were no other (and 
there are many), His Divinity should be received 
among our Primary Convictions. 



NOTE 



The Bishop of Durham has compressed the true meaning 
here into three words — " what things soever the Father doeth, 
these also the Son doeth in like manner. Not in imitation, but 
in virtue of His sameness of nature" (" Speaker's Commentary," 
New Testament, vol. ii. p. 85). 

The imaginative illustration to which I refer has obtained 
considerable circulation. I happen to know of a sermon by a 
preacher of name which was founded upon it, while of its un- 
soundness he became afterwards convinced. I regret that can- 
dor constrains me to trace the modern form of this conception 
to a writer who has made all Christian scholars his debtor. On 
the latter part of St. John (v. 19) M. Godet writes: "Would it 
not seem that Jesus borrows His images in the verse from that 
other toil to which He had lately devoted Himself in the work- 
shop of Nazareth, in the service of the man who fulfilled the re- 
lation of His father here below ? The law of His labor was to 
adapt His work constantly to that of Joseph ; to co-operate in 
it every instant in proportion to His skill and strength, as long 
as daylight lasted and as Joseph himself worked. This com- 
munity of toil evidently covered the child's responsibility for 
every act thus accomplished. In a work infinitely higher Jesus 
now claims the benefit of an analogous position. He lives in 
another work-shop, that of the Father's works. For Heaven 
lias been opened to Him. He perceives every instant the point 
which the divine work on earth has reached, and all His facul- 
ties as man are employed in concurring with it." * 



"Comment, sur l'Ev. de S. Jean," torn. ii. p. 31. Par F. Godet. 



198 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

It is full of instruction and interest to note with -what subtle 
power St. Augustine disposed of the conception — one might 
have thought finally. 

" The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the 
Father do ; for what things soever He. doeth, these also doeth 
the Son likewise." There is danger here of a low carnal con- 
ception stealing in and leading the mind astray. A man might 
form a conception of two artificers, two carpenters so to say — one 
of the two the master, the other an apprentice in a position ol 
attendance upon him. Let us suppose the master making some- 
thing, say a chest. As he makes it, so the apprentice will make 
another after the design which he has observed in the master- 
workman. Now, it is precisely to hinder this duplication of 
our natural human thought from intruding into that divine and 
simple unity that Jesus goes on to say, " What things soever 
the Father doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise," i. e., Not, 
the Father does some certain things, and the Son by imitation 
certain other things — tut, the Son likewise does the same tilings. 
It is not said, " what things soever the Father doeth, things like 
them and of the same type the Son doeth " ; out, " the same things 
the Son doeth likewise." Those things, therefore, the Son 
doeth which the Father doeth also, and not dissimilarly; He 
both does* them, and does them likewise. 



* St. Augustine, in " Joann. Evang." Tract. XX. cap. v. 9, torn. iii. p. 2, 
1561 (edit. Migne). I would engage the reader's attention to the two fol- 
lowing sections. He can find few passages which will more delightfully 
remind him of the " Confessions " — the same inimitable epigram, the 
same combination of tenderness and subtlety, the same elevation of 
theology from metaphysics into devotion. Augustine's dogma is armor, 
■but an armor which becomes winged and lifts him from the earth. 



Discussion OTffU 



SEVENTH PRIMARY CONVICTION 

" I believe in one . . . Lord Jesus Christ . . . God of God." 
" The Word was God."— John i. 1. 

The question which I discuss first is (as I said in 
our last conference) that which is conclusive with 
the majority of Christians — What does the New 
Testament say upon the subject? Were its writ- 
ers convinced of the Godhead of Jesus ? Did they 
wish their readers to think Him the first of saints, 
the chief of the noble army of martyrs, but still a 
saint and a martyr only ? Did they consider Him 
Divine only in a diluted sense, ordained in conse- 
quence of unparalleled merit to be by appointment 
a sort of secondary God ? 

We may conveniently consider in this depart- 
ment four propositions. I. The Divine titles given 
to Jesus in the New Testament prove that they 
held Him to be God. II. The Divine attributes 
assigned to Him by those writers prove that they 
held Him to be God. III. The Divine worship of- 
fered to Him by those writers proves that they 
held Him to be God. IV. The position which He 
claims, and which they accord to Him, proves that 
they held Him to be God. 

This is the direct scriptural proof from the Book. 



202 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

The rest of the argument we may offer in two suc- 
cessive sections. 



There are four divine titles given to Jesus in the 
New Testament : 

1. He is called God expressly,* and Lord God,f 
The words " God was manifest in the flesh," I do 
not press. $ Tor, indeed, genuine criticism gives the 
defenders of the Divinity of Christ far more than it 
takes away. It is a microscope through which the 
minutest fibres of language in the sacred writers 
are seen stamped with the impress of their genuine 
thought. As regards the subject before us — the 
true doctrine of the Greek article compensates us 
for the loss of a few words by the acquisition of 
others not less magnificent. § An argument criti- 
cally untenable is as worthless to the theologian as 
a soft bayonet to the soldier. 

It is possible to evade the force of such passages 
only by supposing the word "God" to be used 
analogously of a highly glorified being. And, no 
doubt, in a figurative sense those who have honor, 
power, or glory committed to them are termed 
"gods" in passages whose sense cannot be mis- 



* John i. 1 ; Heb. i. 8; Rom. ix. 5. The -writer hopes that 
he is not presumptuous or ungrateful in expressing his regret- 
ful conviction that the marginal note of the revisers upon the 
last of these texts is unwarranted by the weight or probability 
of the modern interpretations mentioned in it. 

tRev. xxii. 6-16; Isa. xl. 10; Rev. xxii. 1. 

% 1 Tim. iii. 16. § 2 Thess. iii. 12 ; Titus ii. 13. 



PEIMAET CONVICTIONS 203 

taken. * But no instances can be alleged of any 
but the One Supreme being termed God. And to 
suppose our Lord an inferior god by appointment, 
yet the object of worship, is the very principle of 
polytheism. 

The words of Thomas, recorded in the fourth 
Gospel, are specially full of significance. " Thomas 
said unto Him, My Lord and my God." f 

It is important to consider these words in the 
complete context of the Gospel, as forming part of 
its essence and framework, and bearing upon one 
of its ultimate purposes. For St. John's Gospel 
is a memorial of witnesses to Jesus. It is a col- 
lection of noble cries of faith, wrung from human 
hearts by the sweet surprises of emotion or by the 
resistless evidence of fact. It contains the confes- 
sion of a series of representations of humanity, say- 
ing what they have to say in the presence of Jesus. 
And those confessions are recorded with such per- 
fect naturalness that if the old man of Ephesus 
was not recording fact, he was among the first of 
dramatic geniuses. The Gospel of St. John is thus 
a phonograph. It catches and preserves tones of 
awe, love, wonder, worship. It seems to say to 
every susceptible reader, " Listen ! you shall hear 
what music Jesus drew from the chords of the 
human heart, what strain each statue gave forth 
as it was touched by the dawn. O weary, sinful, 
doubting human soul ! thou, too, mayest be able to 



* 1 Cor. viii. 5 ; John x. 34. (Cf. Ps. lxxxi.) 
t Johu xx. 28. 



204 PEIMAET CONVICTIONS 

say something not altogether unlike." The witness 
of the Baptist, of Andrew, of Philip, of Nathaniel, 
of Nicodemus, of the Samaritan woman, of Peter, 
of the officer, of the blind man, of Martha, reaches 
its culminating point, its ultimate consummation, in 
the adoring confession of Thomas. A mere ex- 
clamation, an ejaculatory oath, is out of the ques- 
tion. " Thomas said unto Sim" is the evangelist's 
simple record. Thus, at the beginning and end 
of the Gospel its loftiest peaks stand up over the 
whole gorge through which faith has to pass. The 
ancient Christians loved to speak of the thunder of 
the Gospel which bears the name of one of the Sons 
of Thunder. These two peaks roll the thunder and 
toss the lightning back each to the other. "The 
Word was God "— " My Lord and My God !" * 

There can be no doubt what Paul and John 
meant when they spoke of Christ as God. 

2. A second divine title given to Jesus in the 
New Testament is Son of God. " We beheld His 
glory," writes St. John, "the glory as of the only- 
begotten of the Father." f " The only-begotten Son, 
which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath de- 
clared Him.";}: This must imply a peculiar and 
distinctive sonship, of which none but He was 



* John i. 1 ; xx. 28. 

t John i. 14. After all, the general view of the older or- 
thodox writers seems correct in the interpretation of these 
words. The verbal adjective has the force of a participle 
passive, and the preposition with a genitive is used, as it is 
after passive and intransitive verbs, in the sense of by. 

J "Many very ancient authorities read God only 'begotten''' 1 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 205 

partaker, and adds a meaning to that title which 
we are now examining. 

There are, indeed, various senses in which Christ 
might conceivably be styled "Son of God," which 
are unquestionably applied to Him in Scripture, 
according to the context, and which yet do not 
come up to the fullest signification which the 
title evidently bears in many momentous passages. 
Christ may be called the Son of God in reference to 
His resurrection ; for the great Easter morning on 
which He burst the prison bars of the tomb was, 
as it were, the birthday of His glorified humanity. 
In this secondary sense, that which is written in the 
second Psalm, " Thou art My Son ; this day have 
I begotten Thee," was fulfilled in that God " hath 
raised up Jesus again." But it is a general rule in 
the interpretation of Scripture, and especially of 
those passages which rise to somewhat of poetic or 
oratorical fervor, that previously existing facts or 
truths are spoken of as if they derived their exist- 
ence from the period or occasion in which they 
are carried forward into a prominent development. 
Language, which in its first acceptation, perhaps, 
belonged to the eternal generation, might thus be 
accommodated and applied to the "first -begotten 
of the dead," "the first-fruits of them that slept." 
And this view is confirmed by the language of St. 
Paul in the first chapter of Romans, where he 
speaks first of the Son of God, Jesus Christ our 



(margin R V.). Several Greek Fathers adopt, and many al- 
lude to, this reading. 



206 PEIMAKY CONVICTIONS 

Lord ; then of His being made of the seed of David, 
i. e., the son of David, according to the flesh, or 
human nature ; then, not of His being made, but of 
His being by the resurrection demonstrated, mani- 
fested, set forth openly, to be the Son of God, ac- 
cording to the spirit of holiness, that is, after the 
Divine Nature. He was then the Son of God in a 
deeper and truer sense than the other " children of 
the resurrection." 

Christ might be called the Son of God, as being 
appointed to be the Heir of all things. But to re- 
strict the Sonship within the limits of the Heirship 
would be to confound the effect with the cause. 
Christ is not Son because Heir, but, on the con- 
trary, Heir because Son. This is clearly stated in 
the same passage which has frequently been pro- 
duced in favor of a figurative and improper filiation. 
" God . . . hath in these last days spoken unto us by 
His Son, whom He hath appointed Heir of all things, 
by whom also He made the worlds." * The Word 
pre-existed, and by Him " all things were made," as 
Son of God, before, by His condescension as man, 
"the keys of hell and of death" were placed in 
" the pierced hands," and the " many crowns " set 
upon the head which in the clays of His flesh had 
been encircled with the crown of thorns. Christ 
might be called the Son of God in the same accep- 
tation in which both angels and men are some- 
times styled sons of Gocl, viz., from a moral likeness 
and affinity to God, from the imitation in measure 



* Heb. i. 1, 2. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 207 

of His perfection, from the full outflowing of the 
Father's love upon those who observe the law of 
their condition. But this also, considered apart 
from the hypostatic union, would be a sense of son- 
ship in which many might participate. True it is, 
that in this acceptation, more strictly again than 
in the former, Christ is God's beloved Son. But 
that moral beauty and completeness, those " cords 
of Adam and bands of love," which drew towards 
His sinless manhood the favor of God and man, 
radiate from the gift of union and the gift of unc- 
tion, and, therefore, from the Divine Kature, as 
their luminous centre. We must look for a signifi- 
cation even higher than this, and the various senses 
which we have considered, not meeting all the ful- 
ness which belongs to the term Son of God, are to 
be distinguished from that higher sense, which we 
proceed to establish. 

It has often been maintained that Messiah and 
Son of God were, in the opinion of the Jews, con- 
vertible terms, and that the notion of a divine and 
a human nature in the Messiah was almost univer- 
sally received among them. This opinion does not 
appear to be well founded. The coarse popular con- 
ceptions of the Messiah in the Jewish mind were 
inseparably blended with dreams of military glory. 
The physical grandeur of the prophecies, their 
magnificent pictures of a victorious and universal 
Church, their rays converging to Jerusalem as to 
a deep and burning central spot, were more con- 
sonant with national pride than the spectacle of 
moral loveliness in humiliation, suffering, and death. 



208 PRIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

David was viewed by the ordinary Jew as the 
chivalrous hero, the Cid or the Caesar of his nation, 
rather than contemplated in the softened light of 
spiritual association. These national prejudices, 
and, above all, this view of the character of* David, 
tinged all the Jewish conceptions of the Messiah 
with a peculiar coloring. Hence it is that we find 
our Lord so frequently appealed to as son of David. 
Not only in the case of the carnal-minded multi- 
tude, but even among the chosen associates of our 
Lord, we find the notion of the Messiah as Son 
of God slowly developed and tardily recognized. 
When Andrew brought Simon to Him, he was able 
to say, " "We have found the Messias." * Simon 
then at once knew and accepted Jesus as the 
Christ. But it was not at once ; it was not till the 
spiritual perception was quickened by habitual con- 
verse with Jesus that he could make that confes- 
sion, " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living 
God," of which the Lord himself said, " flesh and 
blood hath not revealed it unto thee." f If Martha 
(whose character is a female counterpart of Peter's, 
as that of Mary is of John's) broke out into a very 
similar confession, £ it was after a still longer 
knowledge of the Lord. 

The Jews certainly appear to have considered 
the assumption of the title by any, even by the 
Messiah himself, as palpably blasphemous. It is 
only necessary to read carefully two passages in the 



* John i. 41. t Matt. svi. 16, 17. 

X John xi. 27. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 209 

fourth Gospel to see this. - If Christ had riot meant 
by Son of God " God from God " ; if He had not 
intended to imply the principle that that which is 
begotten is of the same and equal nature with that 
which begets — He must have explained and modi- 
fied this statement. 

Those who held that Christ was the Son of God 
in the highest sense must have held that He was 
God.f 

3. A third divine title given to Jesus in the Xew 
Testament is Lord. In this order we follow the ar- 
rangement of the ancient creed, in which the con- 



* John v. 18 ; x. 30-39. 

t Connected with this is a point of great importance. An- 
cient Christian -writers speak of a certain subordination of the 
Eternal Son to the Father. That subordination is not of nature 
or dominion, which would practically make two Gods, a greater 
and a less. But subordination of order is quite consistent with 
true equality of nature. Subordination of office is so also. "The 
works,"' says Hooker, " which outwardly are of God they are in 
such sort of Him, being one, that each Person hath in them, 
somewhat peculiar and proper. For being three, and they all 
subsisting in the essence of one Deity, from the Father, by the 
Son, through the Spirit, all things are. That which the Son 
doth hear of the Father, and which the Spirit doth receive of 
the Father and the Son, the same we have at the hands of the 
Spirit, as being the last, and, therefore, the nearest to us in 
order, although in power the same with the Second and the 
First " (" Eccl. Pol.," i. p. 2). It is partly in this direction that 
the solution of the difficult verse 1 Cor. xv. 28 may be found; 
not by turning the conception of the "eternal Trinity" into 
that of a verbal and temporary relation for the convenience of 
human speculation. 
14 



210 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

fession of Christ's Lordship follows that of His Son- 
ship. 

The language of Heaven has its own courtesies 
and minute proprieties. The name of God common 
to the three Persons of the Godhead* is (not ex- 
clusively, but according to a mysterious peculiarity) 
more generally applied to the Father, as derived 
from none. The name of Lord is similarly applied 
to Christ; sometimes He is "the Lord," sometimes 
"the Lord Jesus," sometimes "our Lord." 

In this case also, as in that of the previous title, 
" Lord " is used occasionally in senses short of the 
highest. 

Thus, there are texts in which He is styled Lord 
in reference to that which He has done for us, or to 
that which He is relatively to us, without reference 
(directly, at least) to what he is absolutely in Him- 
self. He is called Lord in the various acceptations 
of master over servants ; of prophet or teacher ; of 
one who has acquired a peculiar rigrit to those over 
whom He exercises authority by the gift of God, in 
virtue of the price which He paid.f Passages there 
are, also, in which His exaltation as Lord is spoken 
of as the reward of His work. " God hath made 
that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord 
and Christ.":}; " Lie humbled Himself . . . wherefore 
God also hath . . . given Him a name which is above 
every name : . . . that every tongue should confess 



* 1 Cor. xv. 28; 1 John iv. 12. 

t Matt. x. 25 ; xxiv. 45, 46 ; Epb. vi. 9 ; Col. iii. 24 ; iv. 1. 

t Acts ii. 36. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 211 

that Jesus Christ is Lord." * " To this end Christ 
both died, and revived, that He might be Lord both 
of the dead and living." f 

There is a still higher sense in which Christ is Lord. 

Of the four great names of God in the Old Testa- 
ment, Jehovah is the most sacred and solemn. A 
Jew who believes in Judaism will not pronounce 
it. Those who read Hebrew with him are at once 
warned that they are expected to substitute for it 
the word Adonai. The name Jehovah speaks of 
God as the Covenant God, but under the peculiar 
notion of eternal existence. And Jehovah was by 
the LXX. translated Lord (Kvptos:). $ That trans- 
lation was adopted by the writers of the JSTew Tes- 
tament, and applied to Him so repeatedly that it 
became His usual designation. That is so emphati- 
cally the case, that in Bruder's great " Concordance 
to the Greek ISTew Testament " no less than fifteen 
columns are rilled with texts in which the word oc- 
curs—in the vast majority of instances as a title of 
Jesus. 

We have an easy and unanswerable argument to 
a calumny, as ignorant as it is profane, originally 
put forth by Julian the Apostate — that the dogma 
of the Divinity of Jesus was invented or developed 
by "the worthy John." There is a moral argument 
of great weight against the theory. Two things 
especially hated by St. John were lying% and idola- 



* Phil. ii. 11. t Rom. xiv. 9. 

I So also Adonai- Shaddai was rendered by ivavTOK.pa.Tap. 
§ 1 John ii. 22, 27 ; iv. 20 ; Rev. xx. 18. 



212 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 



try.* Note above all the eloquent shudder with 
which the First Epistle closes : " Children, keep 
yourselves from idols." f If St. John intentionally 
exaggerated the glory of our Lord, he deliberately 
conspired to give the honor due to God to one whom 
in his heart he believed to be a creature ; that is, he 
was guilty of lying and idolatry, the two very sins 
which he instinctively loathed. 

There is overwhelming proof that the Epistle to 
the Thessalonians is the earliest of the apostolic 
letters in the canon of the New Testament. It be- 
gins thus : " Paul, and Sylvanus, and Timotheus, unto 
the Church of the Thessalonians which is in God 
the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ." £ It ends 
thus : " The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with 
you." § No later declaration could rise beyond that. 
The plummet of dogma could drop no deeper. The 
wing of worship could soar no higher. Or, if we 
pass to a later epistle, we find the great declaration, 
"in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead 
bodily." I These two dogmatic statements are the 
exact counterpart of St. John's. " All the fulness of 
the Godhead " corresponds to " the Word was God." 
" Dwelleth bodily " is the counterpart of "the "Word 
was made flesh." 

Those who habitually called Jesus Lord must 
have believed that He is God. 

4. A fourth Divine title given to Jesus in the 
1\ ew Testament is the "Word. % 



* Rev. ii. 14, 15 ; ix. 20 ; xxi. 8 ; xxii. 15. t 1 John v. 31. 
J 1 Thess. i. 1. § 1 Thess. v. 28. | Col. ii. 9. 

*i This title begins each of St. John's larger writings: Gospel 



PRIMARY CONYICTIOXS 213 

Such mountains of learning have been heaped 
over the term that it has become difficult to find 
the real conception below it. 

What is certain is this. The notion of the Logos, 
or "Word, had become prevalent among Jewish, and 
not altogether unknown to heathen, thinkers. We 
can trace the development of the idea in the writ- 
ings attributed to Solomon ; perhaps in certain spec- 
ulations of Plato ; more markedly in cabalistic and 
apocryphal writings, until the lines of Jewish and 
Pagan thought intersect each other in Philo. That 
writer speaks of the Word as " a second God," 
"elder than all created beings," "the High-priest 
of the universe, which is God's temple." Thence 
the term passed into the mystical speculations of 
the Gnostics ; and in employing it the Apostle was 
sure to win the attention of those whom he ad- 
dressed. 

St. John, then, adopted a term already in use,* 
because, after all deductions, it was, if inadequate, 
yet more suitable than any other to explain the 
conception of Christ's Divinity which he wished to 
teach. 



i. 1 ; 1 Ep. i. 1 ; Rev. i. 9. (Cf. xix. 12, 13.) By St. John alone 
Christ is spoken of in an unmistakably personal sense as the 
Logos; though there are some passages which seem to point to 
the meaning : Heb.iv. 12 ; 1 Pet. i. 23 ; 2 Pet. iii. 5. Jesus never 
uses the name to designate Himself. 

* One of Gibbon's " solemn sneers " is conveyed in three 
adroitly italicized words upon the margin. " The Logos, taught 
in school of Alexandria, defore Christ 100 ; revealed to Apostle 
St. John, a.d. 97 " (" Decline and Fall," chap, xxi.). 



214 PEIMAET CONVICTIONS 

Language, as modern science demonstrates, is a 
specially human faculty — a rubicon between man 
and the lower creation. From this department the 
title is chosen. The Apostle looked into the depths 
of his own mind. The human word (the Greek \6- 
70?) signifies both the conception and its expression 
— both thought and language. The Divine Word is, 
as it were, the thought of God, unuttered and ut- 
tered. The human word is the invisible creation, 
or the outward utterance of the thinker's mind — 
the first as idea, the second as speech. So Christ is 
the Word whom the Father has inspoken and out- 
spoken into personal existence out of the fulness of 
His being. The Word is God's perfect self-mani- 
festation, and, therefore, necessarily personal. * 

II 

The Divine attributes assigned to Jesus by the 
writers of the New Testament prove that they held 
Him to be God. 

It may be well to pause at this point, and con- 
sider one view, current at the present moment, 
which would summarily dismiss this inquiry as su- 
perfluous, or worse. Before entering into Christol- 



* The Word who was made flesh is distinguished by St. John 
(i. 1-14) from (1) the Gnostic word, created and temporal — as 
being uncreated and eternal. (2) The Platonic word, ideal and 
abstract — as being personal and divine. (3) The Judaistic and 
Philonian word, merely instrumental — as being causal and cre- 
ative. (4) The Dualistic word, which implied a second princi- 
ple — as being absolutely unique. (5) The Doketic word — as 
beins: real and incarnate. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 215 

ogy, it is said by some, you would do well to ascer- 
tain whether evolution has left you a theology in 
the literal sense. 

Assuredly there is no reason to suppose that evo- 
lution more completely demonstrated than it is at 
present, and with certain enormous gaps filled up, 
would seriously affect Theism. For evolution, taken 
in its widest sense, has two great lines. All worlds, 
according to its teachers, were evolved in gradual 
succession from some primordial form of gaseous 
matter which filled all space. There was a time 
when the present planetary systems were only gases 
or vapors. By degrees they were condensed, be- 
came luminous, acquired and emitted heat, were en- 
dowed with rotatory motion, revolved round one 
centre of attraction. Now, in all this the fact of 
God is not in question, but the theory of the par- 
ticular method employed by God. Similarly on 
earth. From a few sporules (or from one primi- 
tive sporule) evolution passed by progressively con- 
nected stages upward through the hierarchy of 
animal existences, from the protoplasm, the bathy- 
bian, and the mollusk, to man. So with vegetable 
life. 

It is frequently supposed that Christians who have 
some inkling of this great theory, and who have 
heard its evidences and results summarized, are liv- 
ing in alarm, hanging in agony of suspense over the 
reports of those who find coprolites and remains in 
caverns, with craven fear of being confronted with 
something which shall discrown Him who has been 
to them the King of truth, hy absolutely cliscred- 



216 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

iting that narrative of the origin of humanity to 
which He (with His apostles) is committed.* 

I happened once to meet with a statement copied 
from the Times (August 17, 1885). A report of the 
Anthropological Society asserted that traces had in- 
dubitably been found of a " semi-human creature," 
able to use fire, and who had acquired a rough art 
of working in stone, in the tertiary age. 

Now, a Christian is not precluded by any article 
of his faith from believing that this is so, if his mind 
is convinced by the evidence which is offered. As 
a Christian, I have no reason for being prejudiced 
against the hypothesis that there were creatures 
preceding man, approaching to him remarkably in 
structure, and probably with some faint rudiments 
of certain of his powers. But the original of man 
is not there. It is not in a feeble creature cower- 
ing on the banks of some icy river, and feebly pro- 
tecting himself with arrow-heads of flints from the 
brutes by whom he was surrounded, and from whom 
he was mainly distinguished by a little more brain, 
a little less ferocity, and a little more cunning. Man 
in the true sense, who is not merely a more perfect 
animal, but a being of a higher order ; man, for 
whose creation God took counsel in the depths of 
His eternal Being ; f man, from whom have de- 
scended inventors, orators, thinkers, poets, sages, 
saints ; of whom came the mother out of whose 
flesh the Spirit moulded the substance that was 



* Matt. six. 4,5; Mark x. 5-9; Rom. v. 12-19; 1 Cor. xv. 
45-47. t Gen. i. 26 ; ii. 7. 



PKDlIAKY CONVICTIONS 217 

made meet to be the habitation of the eternal 
Word — those who ransack earth and go down into 
the sea shall never find a bone of him involving a 
date beyond that which it is possible to assign to 
the creation of Adam. The antiquity of man does 
not for us mean the antiquity of the man-ape, but 
of the Man- Adam ; not 
of the God-like man." 

Xow, on both these 
argument leads us to God, at least as truly as the 
old hypothesis. Will, purpose, adaptation, wisdom, 
follow the flrecloud through each link of the almost 
infinite chain that leads it onward to a world. They 
equally follow the other almost infinite chain that 
leads the protoplasm up to the vertebrates. We 
have a continuous, ever-active miracle substituted 
for a momentary miracle, and a fuller commentary 
than our fathers ever dreamed of upon the declara- 
tion of the Son of God—" My Father worketh hith- 
erto, and I work." f 

Thus, equally under the conditions implied by 
evolution as of old we think of God under spiritual 
ideas. The conception of the Deity of the Son is 
our guide. That conception, as a matter of fact, 
has never existed out of Christendom, for " whoso- 
ever clenieth the Son, the same hath not the Fa- 



* Let me have the satisfaction of referring to "Evolution and 
the Moral Sense," by the Rev. Henry W. Crofton — especially 
pp. x-siv (Rivingtons). These forty pages are, perhaps, not un- 
likely to mark an epoch in theological apologetics. 

f John v. 17. 



218 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

tlier." * And we assign to Gocl those attributes 
which are so many aspects of that august idea. 

Now, when we turn to the New Testament, each 
of those attributes is given to Jesus. 

God is Creator. What of Christ ? " All things 
were made by Him ; and without Him was not 
anything made. That which was macle was life 
in Him."t 

God is Eternal. What of Christ? " I am Alpha 
and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first 
and the last." % 

God is Omnipresent. What of Christ? "Where 
two or three are gathered together in His Name, 
there is He in the midst of them." " He ascended 
up far above all heavens, that He might fill all 
things." § 

Gocl is Omnipotent. What of Christ ? " He up- 
holds all things by the word of His power," and is 
" Almighty." || 

God is Omniscient. What of Christ ? " In Him 
are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowl- 
edge." He " searches the heart and reins," and 
"knoweth all things."^" He is the ''wisdom of 
God." 



* 1 John ii. 23. 

f John i. 3 (marg. R. V.). See also Col. i. 15, 17 ; Heb. i. 2. 
\ Rev. i. 8, 17 ; xxi. 6 ; xxii. 13. (Cf. Isa. xli. 4 ; xlir. 6.) 
§ Matt, xviii. 20 ; Eph. iv. 10. (See also John iii. 13.) 
|| Heb. i. 3 ; Apoc. i. 8. 

T Study Col. ii. 3; Apoc. ii. 23; John xxi. 17; Acts i. 24 
1 Cor. i. 24. 



PRIMAEY COXTICTIOXS 219 

Each distinctive attribute of God is thus ascribed 
to Jesus by the writers of the New Testament ; and, 
therefore, for them He is God. 

Ill 

The Divine worship offered to Jesus proves that 
He is God in the estimation of those who offered it. 

1. In the first place, upon scriptural principles, 
all worship is reserved for God only. 

The Jews were, in the midst of the world, "a 
kingdom of priests, an holy nation, the anointed and 
prophets of God." But the distinctive principle which 
they were set apart to witness and preserve was not 
simply the unity and spirituality of God, but the ap- 
propriation of all honor and worship to God alone. 
If to worship an idol or a created being, under the 
impression that it is the supreme God, be the only 
sin which constitutes idolatry, it is probable that 
neither the Jews nor perhaps any other nation were 
ever guilty of that sin. But to honor creatures with 
adoring veneration is to forsake God. It is almost 
needless to acid how firmly the Jews have clung to 
the principle since their return from the Babylonian 
Captivity. " In the midst of all the obloquy and 
opprobrium with which Tacitus loads that people," 
it has been eloquently said, " his tone suddenly rises 
as he comes to contemplate them as the only nation 
who paid undivided religious honor to the supreme 
and eternal Mind alone, and his style swells at the 
sight of so sublime and wonderful a scene." * The 



Sir James Mackintosh, " Dissertation,'' sec. ii., note. 



220 PKIJIAKY CONVICTIONS 

"warnings of the Old Testament are quite sufficient to 
account for this. Sacrifice, vows, swearing, adoration, 
and invocation are exclusively appropriated to God. 
All religious worship of any but the one God is pro- 
nounced to be an abnegation of God, and a con- 
structive act of treason against the King of kings. 
It has often been argued that the miraculous portion 
of the history of Israel cannot be true, because a 
nation so favored could never have renounced God, 
or held any other to be supreme. Kor did they. 
A prophet shows us that their idolatrous sin was a 
compromise, a syncretism, " a mingle-mangle of re- 
ligion and superstition, of light and darkness," as 
Hooker calls it. " I will cut off them that worship, 
which swear to the Lord, and swear by Malcam." * 

Assuredly this principle is nowhere overruled in 
the ISTew Testament. Almost on its opening page 
Satan, not without some show of piety and even 
humility, claiming to be but God's delegated lieuten- 
ant^ and asking, therefore, for no more than an act 
of inferior homage, is sternly answered, " Thou shalt 
worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou 
serve." " See thou do it not ; worship God," is the 
awful and twice-repeated warning which closes the 
sacred can on 4 

All religious error has its root in a want. One 
great end of the Incarnation was to satisfy the 
yearning of man's heart for some palpable, external 



* Zeph. i. 5. 

t " It hatli been delivered unto rue." — Luke iv. 6 (R. V.). 

\ Apoc. six. 10 ; xxii. 9. 



PKIMAEY CONVICTIONS 221 

object of worship by the visible humanity of the 
Word made flesh. Holy hearts of old were awed 
by the infinite, incomprehensible God. They felt 
with Job, " Behold, I go forward, but He is not there ; 
and backward, but I cannot perceive Him : on the 
left hand, where He doth work, but I cannot behold 
Him ; He hideth Himself on the right hand, but I 
cannot see Him." * These yearnings the heathen 
satisfied in shapes which, were sometimes repulsive, 
sometimes beautiful. The imaginative Greeks more 
especially imparted actual objective existence to 
physical causes and attributes, and bodied forth their 
conceptions of moral beauty and power in tangible 
forms. f The wisdom and love of God met these 
cravings by the exhibition of Him who was God 
manifest in the flesh. They are satisfied in Jesus. 
He says to His brethren, " Come unto Me, all ye 
that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give jou 
rest." The words are at once so full of self-con- 
scious power that none but God dare speak them 
— so sweet that none but man could speak them. 
Before that superhuman humanity we bow down 
without idolatry. For our worship does not termi- 
nate in the manhood ; its object is the Divine Per- 
son who is God and Man. 

Let us, then, grasp the principle that Scripture 
claims all worship for God onlv. 

* 

* Job xxiii. 8, 9. 

t Hooker, " Ecclesiastical Polity," i. 8. See " The Excursion," 
Book IV. : 

" The lively Grecian in a land of hills." 



222 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

2. And now let us note that, not as the ultimate 
point of a long series of dogmatic developments, but 
in the very earliest of the apostolic epistles, Christ is 
invoked, adored, worshipped by prayer. 

I have already directed attention to the impor- 
tance of the Epistles to the Thessalonians for their 
use of the Divine title, Lord, applied to Jesus. 

But observe that in those same epistles He is 
worshipped by prayer. " Now, our God and Father, 
Himself, and our Lord Jesus Christ, direct our way 
unto you. And the Lord make you to increase and 
abound in love." * This is of wonderful dogmatic 
precision. The two subjects are connected with a 
verb in the singular, indicating distinct personal- 
ity and unity of substance with united operation. 
Yet a passage in the second Epistle goes beyond 
even this in its glorification of Christ. In a prayer 
so like that just quoted, in point of construction, 
as to indicate the identity of the fixed dogmatic 
mould from which it proceeded, the name of our 
Lord Jesus Christ stands "before that of the Father. 
" ]STow our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our 
Father, which loved us, and gave us eternal comfort, 
comfort your hearts." f 

Thus the strongest expression of the worship of 
Jesus is found in the earliest of St. Paul's epistles. 
And thus we see the bearing and the inaccuracy of 
the too readily credited assertion that " prayer, truly 



* 1 Thess. iii. 11,12. 

t8 Thess. i. 1 ; ii. 16, 17; iii. 5, 16, 18; 1 Thess. i. 1: 
v. 28. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 223 

apostolic and primitive, is always to God through 
Christ." Of these earliest of primitive inspired 
pages, "almost each chapter," as Bengel says, is 
" sealed with a sigh of prayer," and that prayer to 
Christ. 

And here it is not out of place to make one ob- 
servation. 

It might seem as if the whole heart and intellect, 
faith and worship, of the martyr at whose death he 
had assisted had passed into Paul. St. Stephen's 
discourse, and the charge made against him by the 
Jews, together with his dying prayer, contain in 
germ all Pauline theology. That Jesus " shall 
change the rites which Moses delivered unto us," is 
the root idea of the whole controversy upon the law 
developed by St. Paul in much of his teaching. That 
a dying believer worshipped Christ with such prayer 
as could be offered to God only, was a fact which 
had behind it the dogma of the Divinity of Christ. 
The echo of Stephen's teaching about the law is 
prolonged in the Epistles to the Eomans and Gala- 
tians. The echo of his dying prayer to Christ * is 
faithfully given back in the Epistles to the Thessa- 
lonians.f 



* Those who read the New Testament carefully in the orig- 
inal will be grateful for the apparently slight, but accurate and 
significant, change of the Revisers — " they stoned Stephen, call- 
ing upon the Lord " (Acts vii. 59). 

t For the whole of the argument from the Epistles to the 
Thessalonians, I venture to refer to the " Speaker's Commen- 
tary," N. T., vol. iii. pp. 689, 691, 717, 739. 



224 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

St. Paul worshipped Christ ; therefore he believed 
Christ to be God. 

It is sometimes asked whether, after all, we have 
any express command to worship Christ ? 

I answer, that no command is necessary in such a 
case. There are duties and obligations which rise 
from relations which are made known to us in any 
way. If God is made known to man as his Father 
and Creator by nature, conscience, tradition, the 
duty of worshipping Him follows from the moment 
that the relation is ascertained. If Jesus is revealed 
to us as Lord, God, Son of God, Almighty, Omni- 
scient, our Saviour and Mediator, then gratitude, 
love, reverence, trust, are due from us to Him. His 
relation to us being once made known, the obligation 
to inward worship on our part is an obligation rea- 
sonably arising out of the relation. And outward 
expressed adoration is inseparable from these inward 
principles and emotions. Set those bells ringing in 
millions of hearts, and the whole earth must hear 
their chime. Let the Church know what has been 
made known to her of Jesus — her worship will be 
as irrepressible as the multitudinous murmur of the 
tide or the rustling of the leaves in spring ; as in- 
separable from her knowledge as fragrance from 
the rose, or music from running waters.* 

Yet these words of Christ, " that all may honor 
the Son, even as they honor the Father," f and 
those of St. Paul, that " at the name of Jesus every 



* Butler's "Analogy," Part II. chap. i. sec. ii. 
t John v. 23. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 225 

knee should bow," * have the commandment to 

worship Christ in their very nature and essence. 
Angels, certainly, are called upon to do so.f Do 
we want more than the example of saints and 
angels? We may find it in the anthems of eter- 
nity : " Unto Him that sitteth on the throne, and 
unto the Lamb, be the blessing, and the honor, 
and the glory, and the dominion forever and 
ever." % 

8. Once more. Unstudied expressions often indi- 
cate essential operative principles more clearly than 
elaborate statements. Instinctive definitions are 
the self -formed photographs of parties, and commu- 
nities. Formal definitions are taken from books or 

from regions of abstract thought. Instinctive defi- 
es o 

nitions make themselves in the light of real life. 
They are shadows unconsciously thrown upon the 
most sensitive of spiritual substances. In the days 
of the Church's first love, the instinctive definition 
of themselves given by her children was, " they that 
call upon the name of the Lord," § i. e., those who 
worship Christ as Lord. [I 

Such was the aspect which Christians wore from 



* Phil. ii. 10. 

f " Let all the angels of God worship Him."— Heb. i. 6. 

\ Rev. v. 13. Christianity is not a temporary influence, to be 
resolved into pure theism. The religion of heaven, like that 
of earth, is Christianity. 

§ Acts ix. 14; xxii. 16; 1 Cor. i. 2; 2 Tim. ii. 22. 

|| The origin of the phrase is found in the words which re- 
late the beginning of public worship: "Then began men to call 
upon the name of the Lord " (Gen. iv. 26). 
15 



226 PEIMAKY CONVICTIONS 

the very first in the eyes of their enemies. Scarce- 
ly was St. John dead when Pliny wrote to Trajan 
an account of what he had learned of Christians. 
" This was the sura of their guilt or error, that they 
were wont to assemble before daylight on a given 
day, and to sing by turns a hymn to Christ as 
God."* About twenty years ago, a rude caricature 
of a shape on a cross was found which had been 
scratched by some soldier in the guard-room under 
the Palace of the Caesars, in the reign of Severus 
or Caracalla. Another soldier makes a gesture of 
worship to the crucified monster, and the ribald wit 
of the barracks scrawls his explanation, " Alexame- 
nes worships his God." 

Or, if we turn to friends and their own writings. 
Polycarp, the disciple of the Lord, and the familiar 
companion of the rest who had seen the Lord, in the 
last moments of his saintly life concluded his prayer 
by saying, "For this and for all things I praise 
Thee, I bless Thee, I glorify Thee, with the Eter- 
nal One from heaven, Jesus Christ, Thy beloved 
Son, to whom, with Thee and the Holy Ghost, be 
glory, both now and evermore. Amen." f A very 
ancient doxology runs, " To Thee be glory, praise, 
might, reverence, adoration ; and to Thy Son, Jesus, 
Thy Christ, our Lord and God and King, and to the 
Holy Ghost." A prayer at the beginning of a vener- 
able liturgy, probably of the third century, com- 
mences thus, " O Master and Lord Jesus Christ, O 
"Word of God, who didst give Thyself a sacrifice 



Plin., lib. x. Epist. 97. t " Martyr., 1 ' Polycarp, cxiv. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 227 

without spot upon the cross, bringing us near to 
God," etc * 

Some among us write as if the worship of Jesus 
were a rapture, a passionate flight, an ardent poetry, 
tolerable certainly in the agonies of faith, possibly 
for " solemn psalm and silver litany," intolerable 
for the rational worship of a Christian in the nine- 
teenth century. But how was it with the inspired 
writers of the New Testament, with the primitive 
martyrs \ This adoration came not from the super- 
ficies, but from the depths, of their being. Behind 
it were the prayers of their life, below it the con- 
victions of their deliberate judgment. The prin- 
ciple was written in their souls, the dogma shrined 
in their hearts. The language of their lives rushed 
to their lips in death. They believed that Jesus 
was divine — not as poets tell us that the " nightin- 
gales divinely sing," or of "the look divine of the 
slow-sinking sun," or of that " divinest clime," but 
as Paul or John meant it. They burst into the 
worship of Jesus amidst the fires, or when they 
were flung to the wild beasts, because they had 
done so every day and night since they had known 
Christ. How beautiful is the passage in which 
Paul speaks of Christians as worshippers of Christ ! 
He addresses, indeed, but a local church, that of 
Corinth. But that " broad heart " (as Chrysostom 
calls it) catches fire. He will make them see how 
great the company into which they are admitted, 
how vast the volume of worship which they help 



•Liturg. St. Jacob, " Tetral. Lit,," pp. 6, 7. 



228 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

to swell. They are in touch, in time, and in tune 
"with all that call upon the name of our Lord 
Jesus Christ" in every place both then and now.* 
Assuredly this aspect of our Lord's Divinity is 
very practical. We may not have to witness in the 
flames or among the lions'. But death comes at 
last. Some, no doubt, die painlessly and in a mo- 
ment. As the old rabbi said, " God kisses their 
souls away " ; or as the Greek poet, " they are 
touched with gentle arrow of Artemis." But to 
most there is a struggle and an agony. You and 
I may be stretched as on a cross, or writhe as in 
the fire. We have probably tasted a few drops of 
the bitter cup of pain. We have seen this in the ■ 
case of our clear ones. The westering sun is in 
some of our faces as we climb the hill. We are 
near the cold and narrow hut, where we must lie 
down for a while, to see after a little rest the dawn 
break in its glory, as it never broke on earth upon 
the awful beauty of the snow and glacier. It will 
be well for us if we can worship Christ then; if, 
as we look back, we find that we have not only 
said, " Lord ! Lord !" from time to time, but made 
our life one act of worship of Jesus. " For who- 



* 1 Cor. i. 2. "I, for one, am deeply convinced that the wor- 
ship of Christ in the Psalms is recognized in the New Testa- 
ment (Heb. i.), and that the psalter leads to the worship of 
Jesus by general preparation and special provision — indeed, 
that songs fitted for the greatest Christian truths are provided 
by anticipation, and that in the fitness of psalms for Christian 
worship we have a, prophetic fact" ("Witness of the Psalms," 
Lecture VI. pp. 1C8-219, 2d ed.). 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 229 

soever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be 
saved." * 

IV 

The position which Jesus claims, and which the 
writers of the New Testament accord to Him, 
proves that He is, in their belief, God. 

We hold in our memory throughout this branch 
of the argument that great principle declared by 
God himself in the second commandment, " I, the 
Lord thy God, am a jealous God." f 

The word rendered jealous in the sacred original 
is, like very many other Hebrew terms, pictorial 
in the highest degree. It signifies the red glow % 
of that fire of wrath which is the anger of love 
wounded by faithlessness. The division of our af- 
fections is a form of spiritual adultery. This is the 
true explanation of a text in the Epistle of St. James 



* Rorn. x. 13. There is a quiet majesty in the way in 
which He (airos) is used by St. Paul, e. g., in Col. i. 16-23, 
twelve times certainly referring to Christ — twice in a way which 
we can scarcely definitely distinguish. Indeed, the mode in 
which this pronoun is employed, sometimes emphatically, of 
Christ (1 John i. 5), sometimes in a synthesis, iu which Christ 
and God are blended and cannot be separated by critical analy- 
sis, is one of the strongest proofs of Paul's entire possession by 
the thought of the true and proper divinity of the Son of God. 
Those who will be at the pains to refer to the writer's note on 
1 John i. 5, " Speaker's Commentary," N. T., vol. iv. pp. 309, 310, 
will, I think, see evidence of Luther's saying that " there is 
much divinity in pronouns." t Exod. xx. 5. 

I Kan 'a : the root appears iu such words as can-dere (incan- 
descent). 



230 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

which perplexes many : " Ye adulterers and adul- 
teresses, ... do ye think that the Scripture saith in 
vain [i. e., not in one or two texts alone, but gen- 
erally], " He [i. e., God] yearns for the spirit that 
dwelleth in us even passionately ?" * This is saying 
in another form, "the Lord thy God is a consuming 
fire, even a jealous God." " I am the Lord : that 
is My name : and My glory will I not give to 
another." f 

I will ask those who read these pages to carry 
constantly in their minds the familiar words from 
the second commandment, quoted a little above, 
while they review the position in which Christ is rep- 
resented as standing to the whole history of every 
soul. They may, I am sure, be trusted to draw the 
only possible conclusion from it. 

The position, then, claimed by Jesus, and conceded 
by His apostles, stands as follows : 

1. Think of the form of baptism, as recorded by 
St. Matthew, " Go ye, therefore, and make disciples 
of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the 
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." £ 

Here was a pregnant and momentous injunction. 
Now, if ever, when He was about to leave them 
under circumstances of such majestic solemnity, was 
the time to disabuse their minds of any idolatrous 



* More literally, " the spirit which He made to dwell in us 
He yearneth for even unto jealous fury" (marg. R. V.)- This 
rendering is powerfully defended by the Dean of Rochester in 
his Notes in the " Speaker's Commentary." 

t Deut. iv. 24; Isa. xlii. 8. J Matt, xxviii. 19, 



PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 231 

feeling which, they might entertain towards Him. 
Yet the form of the rite which He instituted at that 
exigent moment must have tended greatly to con- 
firm any such impression. Baptism was not a cere- 
mony new to the apostles or to the Jewish people. 
The Baptist would not have numbered so many of 
the Pharisees among his followers had his proceed- 
ings been unauthorized by traditionary usage. This 
baptism of repentance by a prophet was not, how- 
ever, the same in purport with that to which the 
apostles must have understood our Lord to refer. 
The Jews were used to receive Gentiles into the 
covenant, whether as proselytes of the gate or as 
proselytes of righteousness, by a baptism into the 
name of the Father, or profession of one true God, 
and of Him alone. This our Lord adopts into the 
Christian religion as the sacrament for initiation for 
those who became proselytes to " the city of the liv- 
ing- God, the heavenly Jerusalem " * — His Church. 
The addition to the ancient form was intended to 
express what was peculiar to the Gospel, over and 
above what was peculiar to Judaism and natural re- 
ligion. The essence of the latter might be said to 
consist in religious regards to God the Father ; and 
the essence of the former, as distinguished from the 
latter, to consist in religious regards to the Son and 
to the Holy Ghost. It was but a natural interpre- 
tation of the words to suppose that the Son and 
Spirit were placed on a level with the Father. And 
in the religious circumstances of the whole world 



Hub. xii. 22. 



232 PKD.IAKY CONVICTIONS 

there were obvious reasons why this form should 
have been avoided, unless it were strictly intended 
to denote the Godhead of the Son and Holy Ghost. 
The junction of a creature and an attribute, or of 
two creatures, with the supreme God, is a notion so 
repugnant to ordinary modes of thought as well as 
to the common usage of language, that it could not 
have come into the minds of those who were bap- 
tized. When the Jew came to be baptized, the form 
of baptism would convey to him the equality of the 
Three Persons, and would thus present a stumbling- 
block to his imperfect conception of the Divine 
Unity which would hardly have been placed in his 
way unnecessary.* 

The Gentile, converted from his idols, could but 
suppose that for them he had taken Father, Son, 
and Holy Ghost to be his God. 

The question of infant or adult baptism does not 
affect the conclusion here. The adult would feel 
that his life was formally consecrated to Christ. 
The child would be considered by others as so dedi- 
cated, and instructed accordingly when capable of 
Christian teaching. 

2. This is much. Yet it is but the beginning. 

Another simple but sacred and sublime rite was 
instituted by Jesus. As a matter of fact, it is re- 



* It has, no doubt, been argued by some that Jews were bap- 
tized into the name of Jesus only ; and by others that such is 
the proper form now (Acts ii. 38 ; viii. 16 ; x. 48 ; xix. 5 ; xxii. 
16). I am very far from thinking so myself, but the opinion 
does not materially affect the argument. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 233 

ceived, and has been received ever since the Ascen- 
sion, by multitudes of souls. It is celebrated in dif- 
ferent forms by all Christians, with very few ex- 
ceptions. It is received by gathered families, by 
children leaving their homes, by married people 
just before the long parting, by millions who seek 
comfort and strength. Into those high and nrvste- 
rious aspects of it which are the subject of, alas ! 
heated controversy this is not the place to enter. 
One side of it all admit — it is a commemoration. 
" This do in remembrance of Me." * This long- 
chain of eucharistic observance has one object. 
These assemblages of congregations, these millions 
of souls drawn together in sacred moments of holy 
emotion, come there to remember Christ. 

3. Yet further. 

The Christian Church retains a weekly clay of 
rest, (111 fares the community or family where it is 
forgotten.) The essential principle of the Sabbath 
is spiritualized and transferred to the first day of 
the week. Its simplest and scriptural name is the 
most significant for our purpose — it is the Lord's 
Day.f 

As the Sabbath was Creation Day, so the Lord's 
Day is Redemption Day. "Who can suppose that a 
day intended to be observed forever was associated 
with the name of a creature ? 

4. But this, it may be thought, is the public as- 
pect (so to speak) of the argument. The position 



* 1 Cor. xi. 24. Waterlancl proposes "for a memorial of Me," 
or, "for My memorial." t Apoc. i. 10. 



234 PEIMAET CONVICTIONS 

assigned to Him, as it were, generally in rites, or by 
a weekly day of observance, does not cover the 
whole field of life and thought and feeling. Bap- 
tism, especially in these latter times, is but a point 
in a distant past, which to mere imagination or 
memory fails to connect itself with the present. 
Communicants go out from their churches, and in 
many cases think little of the matter again until 
some crisis of their existence induces them to ap- 
proach it once more. The Lord's Day fades into 
the common sunshine. It is scarcely as much to 
many of us as the streak of light early on a Monday 
morning seemed to the little boy who, seeing it 
through the opened window, asked, " Is that the 
golden track of Sunday in the Monday sky ?" 

There is much more than the three things just 
specified, however important they may be. 

In the busiest life there are moments unoccupied. 
There are hours when we travel or are awake at 
night. There are solitary evenings, when we see the 
shapes in the winter fire or the shadows gathering 
on the summer lawn. 

Wow, the apostles of Jesus would connect all such 
movements with Him — every feeling, every motion, 
each ticking of the clock, each beat of the heart. 
Nothing in human life is too great or too small 
for Him. He encircles us divinely and infinitely. 
Hence that little word of two letters which is so 
tenderly and awfully great, " in Christ " — encom- 
passed by Him, ensphered in Him as the place and 
space of all souls. Marriage is a leading event of 
human life. For a notary or copyist to write down 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 235 

from rough notes or dictation is a piece of mechan- 
ical commonplace. Yet the woman marries '"'in 
the Lord." And Tertius, who took down the Epistle 
to the Eomans, leaves the record, " I, Tertius, who 
wrote this epistle in the Lord." * " "Wouldst thou 
enter a temple ?" said a great spiritual writer of old ; 
" Enter into thyself." There are some who are 
solemnized by passing into an old and beautiful 
church. It seems as if the sound of a footfall would 
be a desecration, an idle or impure thought a blas- 
pheniy. "We are taught by an apostle that the heart 
is such a church ; that there is in it an altar where 
Christ is really present, and where we are to adore 
Him day and night. If I were to single out the one 
text which more than another assures me of the 
divinity of Jesus, I almost think that I should turn to 
that .whose restoration to its rightful force outweighs 
nearly all that can be said against the Eevised Ver- 
sion — "sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord."f 

5. And this principle is carried out in every rela- 
tion of the human soul and its existence. 

There is a purpose and aim for every life, one to 
whom it must be given. " Christ died for all, that 
they which live should not henceforth live unto 
themselves, but unto Him who died for them and 



* 1 Cor. vii. 39; Rom. xvi. 22. 

t 1 Peter iii. 15. Those -who wish to have the full force of 
this -will turn to the whole context (ver. 14), and to the allusion 
of the prophet — ''neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid. 
Sanctify the Lord of hosts Himself, and He shall be for a sanct- 
uary" (Isa. viii. 12, 13, 14). 



236 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

rose again." * Christ is the end of every Christian 
life. That which renders such a purpose, such a self- 
consecration, possible, is the reconciliation by which 
we are brought near to God, won as it is by His 
death. " Christ also hath once suffered for sins, 
that He might bring us to God." f The shadow of 
the cross lies over the whole path we tread on earth. 
The cross is at the beginning, the end, and every- 
where, Christ is our peace, our reconciliation. Temp- 
tation comes even to God's faithful servants. But 
" He that was Begotten of God keepeth him, and 
the evil one toucheth him not.":}: There is some- 
thing to look forward to, an expectation in every 
life. We " wait for His Son from heaven, whom He 
raised from the dead, even Jesus." § All our life 
is to be filled with His. Under and through the old 
life is to grow a new and better. Christ becomes 
coextensive with life, and permeates it by His Spirit. 
One writes, " I have been crucified with Christ ; yet 
I live, and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in 
me." " To me to live is Christ." || Life is Christ's. 
As time goes on there is a presence thought of 
every day, a sudden shadow thrown over the sun- 
niest sward — the shadow of death. "Whether we 
die we die unto the Lord." f Death is Christ's. 
Faith speaks to us of future judgment. " The Fa- 
ther hath committed all judgment unto the Son." ** 

* 2 Cor. v. 15. t 1 Pet. iii. 18. 

% 1 John v. 18. Not, observe, that the human child begotten 
of God Tceepeth himself '. § 1 Thess. i. 14. 

|| 1 Gal. ii. 20 ; Phil. i. 21. 1 Rom. xiv. 8. 

** John v. 22. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 23 7 

Judgment is Christ's. Yet again for eternity. "We 
never lose that haunting Presence. He fills the 
world unseen. "With the expansion of our spiritual 
faculties He becomes for us greater, tenderer, more 
beautiful. " He sitteth on the throne."' His name 
rises on every billow, and falls on. each ripple of the 
tides of adoration. " Worthy is the Lamb that hath 
been slain to receive the power, and riches, and 
might, and honor, and glory, and blessing." " Unto 
Him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb, 
be the blessing, and the honor, and the glory, and 
the dominion forever and ever." * He is Temple 
and Glory and Light. Eternity is Christ's. 

Xow, the position thus claimed and freely ac- 
corded can only be yielded by men who possessed 
the principles of the writers of the Xew Testament, 
upon one hypothesis. 

Let us remember the familiar words, " I, the Lord 
thy God, am a jealous God." f 

He to whom we are consecrated in baptism ; 
whom we remember in Holy Communion ; to whom 
each first day of our week is set apart ; for whom 
we are to sanctify our hearts ; to whom our lives 
are to be devoted ; who brought us near to God by 
His sacrifice; who keeps us in temptation; whom 
we are to expect as we expect a returning friend, 
when we look out for the sail or streak of smoke of 
the vessel which brings him to us ; who is to stand 
by us when flesh and heart fail; who must judge us; 
whom we shall worship forever, and without whom 



Apoc. v. 12, 13. f Exocl. xx. 5. 



238 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

heaven would be unheavened — who, and what, is 
He? 

He demands all we can give — memory, love, 
gratitude, reliance, constant thought, secret prayer, 
public worship, the belief of the intellect and heart, 
the bowed knee, the faithful working, the constant 
witness — if needs be, the confession even unto death. 

Who, and what, is He ? 

If He were God He could ask no more, and He 
could get no more, for we have no more to give. 
"When we call upon people to give themselves to 
Christ, we tell them implicitly that He is this. If 
not a single text plainly called Him Lord or God ; 
if all creeds were expunged, and all dogmatic confes- 
sions cancelled in all the churches ; so long as our 
New Testament remains we shall have superabun- 
dant proof of the Divinity of Jesus in His own lan- 
guage and that of His apostles (so far as their 
estimate is concerned), simply by comparing it with 
the principle of the Old Testament, " I am a jealous 
God," and with the utterance sanctioned by Christ 
Himself, "thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, 
and Him only shalt thou serve." 

A discussion of this great subject would be very 
defective if it failed at least to refer to the Old 
Testament — to the witness of prophets and psalm- 
ists to the Divine glory of the suffering and exalted 
King whom they so certainly predict.* 



* Any adequate treatment of the Old Testament would re- 
quire a volume, rather than a paragraph in a discussion like 
this. I therefore at present make no attempt in that direction 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 239 

"We shall proceed in the next part of the argument 
to consider the witness of our Lord himself. 



SUGGESTIONS OF THE GOSPEL. 

There is a great living scholar and thinker,* who 
has passed long, silent years in analyzing the minut- 
est fibres of human speech. He knows languages 
and compares them, not by individuals, but by fam- 
ilies. The very grammar of speech turns into a 
commentary not only upon ethnology, but upon 
ethics, under his treatment. There are, no doubt, 
those who consider that one purpose of human Ian-, 
guage is " to conceal thought " ; yet, even in their 
case, their words, sooner or later, even here, become 
a revelation of their character. f 



beyond referring to Mic. v. 2, 3 ; Isa. vii. 14 ; ix. 6, 7 ; xliv. 6 ; 
xlviii. 16, 17 ; Jer. xxiii. 6 ; Hos. i. 7 ; Zech. xiii. 6 ; Ps. xxii. 1G. 
Compare specially Mai. iv. 5, 6 with Luke i. 16, 17. For the 
worship of Christ in the psalter see "Witness of the Psalms to 
Christ and Eternity" (pp. 198-203, 2d ed.). 

* See "Principles of the Structure of Language." Rev. 
James Byrne, Dean of Clonfert. (2 vols., Triibner & Co.) 

f '-Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give an 
account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words 
thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be con- 
demned " (Matt. xii. 36, 37). I lately met with some remarks upon 
the notorious John Wilkes, -which seemed to give a terrible 
significance to the passage. Wilkes was one of those persons 
who used showy language, as smartly dressed persons, not re- 
markable for neatness or even cleanliness use fine clothes. In 
writings and speeches he abounded with pompous moralities and 



240 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

Now,' we have here a considerable amount of ma- 
terial with which to deal. We have hundreds of 
the words of Christ.* And we may deal with them 
as genuine with the most perfect confidence. One 
of the greatest masters of fiction has pleaded for 
allowances on his own behalf. " I never can, nor 
do, pretend to the observation of complete accuracy, 
even in matters of outward costume, much less in 
the more important points of language and manners. 
A fair license is due to the author of a fictitious 
composition." f The evangelists must have been 
dramatists beyond the range of Shakespeare if they 
could have invented words so inimitable. 

1. Let us consider that, in the general style and 
tenor of His teaching and language, there is noth- 
ing inconsistent with the view taken of Him by St. 
Paul and St. John, as above developed. 

The words of Jesus have two characteristics — 
transparent simplicity at times, unfathomable depth 
at others, generally a combination of the two. They 
are, for the most part, brief, irresistible words. Fre- 
quently they are paradoxes, because their all-em- 
bracing truth takes account of all antinomies and 
apparent contradictions of things. They are con- 



fine declamation. His ordinary conversation in bis unguarded 
moment, his "idle word" (prjpa dpyov), was evil and filthy in 
no ordinary degree. The " idle word " in such, a case would 
be the truest index of character, and the most appropriate sub- 
ject-matter of judgment. 

* pr]/iara, single articulate sentences, utterances, things spoken. 
Each prjfj.a is a part of the whole Xoyos- (word). 

t Sir Walter Scott. Preface to "Ivanhoe." 



PKIMAET CONVICTIONS 241 

stantly epigrammatic in form, almighty and omni- 
scient epigrams. But an epigram gives us the idea 
of minute literary finish, of the stone of language 
scraped perfectly smooth by the glass of critical 
taste. In this case there is no effort, no phrase-mak- 
ing, no rhetorical posturing. He makes no display 
of the apparatus of learning. Yet in a few sentences 
He grasps the whole meaning of the Law,* and com- 
prises the whole spirit of Hellenic culture. f 

By some an objection has been raised from the 
mass of allusions to common life and every-day ob- 
jects, from the metaphors and parables which appeal 
to the experience of the peasant and the ordinary 
observer. That on which the objection is founded I 
desire not only to accept, but to accentuate. 

The words of Jesus unquestionably move in this 
sphere, and abound in such illustrations.:}; 

I admit this characteristic of the Saviour's teach- 
ing ; but I contend that if He were indeed the "Word 
made flesh, He must necessarily have spoken in such 
a style in much of His teaching. 

2. But there are more positive indications of di- 
vinity in the language of Jesus. 

(1) Jesus speaks as God, because He speaks per- 
sonally. 

* Matt. v. 21, 38; ix. 13; Mark ii. 23-28; Luke xviii. 31-34; 
xx. 39-44; xxiv. 27. 

t Matt. vi. 32 ; John xii. 20, 25. 

I St. John's Gospel contains no parables. But it contains 
metaphor and brief metaphorical sayings addressed to a different 
class of hearers. And a metaphor is a parable in posse, the stuff 
of which a parable might be made. 
16 



242 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

I scarcely know what other single word to use. 
My meaning is this : 

Moralists and. philanthropists are wont to make 
their appeal in the name of principles or of ideas. 
They efface their own personality before principles 
of charity or patriotism or general good — at least 
they profess to do so. On the contrary, principles 
are effaced before the personality of Christ. I do 
not mean that they cease to exist, but that they are 
absorbed into Him. Read the description of the 
Last Judgment at the close of the twenty-fifth of St. 
Matthew. The general principle of compassion, of 
charity, is swallowed up in the relation of the act to 
Christ. In this "altruism" the altar is Christ. "I 
was an hungered, and ye gave Me meat: I was 
thirsty, and ye gave Me drink : I was a stranger, 
and ye took Me in: ISTaked, and ye clothed Me: I was 
sick, and ye visited Me. I was in prison, and ye 
came unto Me." * Similarly the sacrifice of every- 
thing, of life itself, is a sacrifice, not to duty, not to 
an abstract ideal, but a sacrifice of love and devotion 
to a person. " He that loseth his life, on account 
of Me, shall find it." + The very love of child- 
hood is not merely a beautiful emotion of tender- 
ness, a yearning towards the innocence which makes 
the sunshine upon a young child's head ripple into 
a softer gold. The child is drawn towards Christ, 
and seen enfolded by Him. " And when He had 
taken a child in His arms, He said unto them, Who- 
soever shall receive one of such children in My name 



* Matt. xxv. 35, 30. t Matt. x. 39. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 243 

receiveth Me." "- Truth itself is identified with Him. 
"I am the Truth." f 

Correspondent to this all-embracing, all-absorbing 
personality is the tone and principle of His teaching. 
The great thinker addresses his school, and he says : 
" I speak in full possession of those principles which 
contain in themselves the germ of their own accom- 
plishment. This which I announce is a law of things, 
a result of experience, the unfailing consequence of 
premises which cannot be denied." The man to 
whom authority is committed challenges attention. 
" I speak with every right to be heard. I hold the 
commission of a monarch," or " I am intrusted with 
a mandate from the people." The prophet strikes a 
grander chord — " thus saith the Lord." But Christ 
begins His sentences thus, " Verily, verily, I say 
unto you." ^ 

* Mark is. 36, 37. f John xiv. 5. 

1 1 venture here to quote the following passage: "This at 
once enables us to perceive the meaning of the ' Amen ' so often 
used in the Gospels. The double ' Amen ' occurs as the prelude 
to sentences of Christ twenty-five times in St. John's Gospel 
alone. The single ' Amen ' occurs about thirty times in St. Mat- 
thew. It is half assertive, half liturgical. To those simple men, 
as they rocked with Him in the boat or walked in the long, 
golden hush of the summer evening by the lake of Galilee, came 
His 'Amen.' It was like the hymn of their nursery and the 
chant of their synagogue. It was also the espression of cer- 
tainty. It told them of that upon which they could lean un- 
hesitatingly ; of the resolution of their simple doubts ; of a fixed 
heaven over the fleeting waves of human opinion. These things 
saith the ' Amen.' It is a name of Christ; but it is so only for 
those who know one characteristic of His teaching — its abso- 
lute, unhesitating self-assertion " (" The Great Question," p. 50). 



244 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

(2) Jesus speaks universally. 

No one else, I think, has ever even seriously made 
the attempt. The patriot or poet or historian speaks 
only to one people, or to the few other nations who 
may care to have the oration, the poem, or history 
translated. The man in authority may make an 
announcement to an empire. But, however vast the 
empire may be, there is always a last acre beyond 
which it does not extend, a last billow beyond whose 
foam the waters belong to another realm. 

(3) But, further, Jesus speaks not only universally, 
but inimitably ; not only to all men, but to all that 
is in them. 

Earthly authority cannot affect to reach beyond 
outward acts. Even Nebuchadnezzar's mad pride, 
which addressed " every people, nation, and lan- 
guage," could only menace with penalty those who 
should "speak anything amiss against the God of 
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego." * No police 
can regulate the heart ; no eye can penetrate the 
veil of flesh which hangs between the world of 
thought and the outer world. There is a sphere 
where no writ runs but the writ of God. To that 
sphere Jesus speaks : " I say unto you, That whoso- 
ever is angry with his brother without a cause shall 
be in danger of the judgment." "I say unto you, 
That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after 
her hath committed adultery with her already in 
his heart." f 

To speak universally and inimitably is to be illim- 
itable and universal — that is, to be God. 



- Dan. iii. 29. t Matt. v. 22, 28, 29. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 245 

(4) Jesus speaks of Himself in language which 
plainly asserts divinity. 

One still young, as men count youth, whose cra- 
dle lay at no great distance in the tract of years, 
whose grave was opening for Him, said : "I and 
My Father are one " ; " before Abraham was, lam"; 
" the glory which I had with Thee before the world 
began." - 

Turn to one other utterance — " He that hath seen 
Me hath seen the Father." f Philip's prayer had 
been, "Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth 
us." Every man's life is pervaded by a wish, and 
every continued wish is the stuff of which a prayer 
is made. The prayer of the ambitious man, upon 
this principle, is, " Lord ! show us power " ; of the 
avaricious, " show us wealth " ; of the passionate, 
" show us pleasure " ; of the artist, " show us beau- 
ty"; of the woman, "show us affection"; of the 
philosopher, "show us virtue," or " truth," or "God." 
But Philip's is a better prayer. As Melanchthon said, 
" If Socrates, Plato, and the noblest philosophers of 



* John x. 30 ; viii. 58 ; xvii. 5. 

t John xiv. 9. Bengefs golden notes should be weighed on 
this verse, on Matt. v. 11, aud on John x. 30. "By 'we are'' 
Sabellius is refuted; by one (unum), Arius." The first person 
plural has a peculiar greatness of signification as used of the 
Father aud the Son; for Jesus rarely indeed uses it of Himself 
and men; only when the question is of something purely ex- 
ternal (John xi. 7), or when He speaks as one unknown (Matt, 
iii. 15 ; John iv. 22) ; nearly always He addresses them in the sec- 
ond person, which signifies that He is not of the common con- 
dition (Matt. v. 12, 20 ; John vi. 49; x. 34; xiv. 9; xx. 17). 



246 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

old had been standing by, they would full surely 
have praised that prayer." Our Lord's answer is 
the germ of all the great Image of God theology.* 
Chrysostom has said a masterly word upon the an- 
swer of Jesus to Philip, " He that hath seen Me, 
hath seen the Father" : "If Christ were of another 
substance, He could not have said this. For no nat- 
ure is seen in art by any other different from it. 
No man who had never seen gold would see the nat- 
ure and substance of gold in silver." 

(5) Jesus speaks creatively. 

One word created Baptism, one the Holy Commu- 
nion, one the Ministry. Think of that missionary 
spirit which is never altogether dead. Some one 
has said that a great policy is generally an improb- 
able policy. But an impossible policy, which yet 
succeeds, is a divine policy. And such was the plan 
of Jesus when He sent forth that handful of simple 
men to conquer the world. He spoke, not only to 
them, but to all the winds that blow across the earth, 
to all the waves that carry sails to every shore. He 
spoke to hearts in generations yet unborn — to Xav- 
ier, Judson, Selwyn, Stirling. 

Yet again, the teaching of Jesus created new 
moral ideas. The science of ethics is one for the con- 
sideration of which the heathen world had, in one 
respect, an advantage — for it could look at virtues 
and habits purely from the view of reason. "What 



* " The off-raying of the Father's glory, and the stamped copy 
of His substance " (Heb. i. 3) ; " Who is the Image of that God 
who is invisible" (Col. i. 15). 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 247 

system of ancient ethics ever included humility, or 
looked at it as anything but a mean, unmanly pov- 
erty of spirit ? * A few sentences of Jesus created 
humility, and made the violet of the soul the recog- 
nizance of our faith.f A few words of His hallowed 
the duty of forgiveness ; another assured penitents 
of pardon. \ 

Once more. The words of Jesus created new con- 
solations upon earth, and regenerated every home 
which they reached. 

One word of Christ provided for the side. He 
bequeathed to the sick all the millions that have 
been left for hospitals by the rich who believe in 
Him ; all the possibilities of skill and loving subtlety 
of relief which lay folded in the intellect of man 
and in the heart of woman, when He left them five 
words — "sick, and ye visited Me."§ Eoman and 
Greek civilization and culture were defiled by infan- 
ticide. " At Sparta, when an infant is born, there 
is first a deliberation on its life or death. If it is of 
a vigorous complexion it may live ; if it is feeble, or 
deformed, it may be thrown into the hole in Mount 
Taygetus." Plutarch quietly approves of this as 
good for the State. | At Athens the laws of the 



* So much so that the very adjective applied to the King rid- 
ing into Jerusalem in His humility (npavs, Matt. xxi. 5) is the 
same which appears in the Latin pravus, and in our depravity. 

f Matt. v. 3, 5 ; Luke xiv. 11 ; xviii. 14. No doubt there is a 
prelude to this in the "lay of the humble" — the "rosebud of 
the psalter" (Luther), Ps. exxxi. 

\ Matt. vi. 14; ix. 13; xviii. 21-35; Luke xv. 

§ See the original of Matt. xxv. 36. || "Life of Lycurgus." 



248 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

land formally permitted infanticide. At Eome, by 
a refinement of cruelty, the murder might be put off 
until the little thing was three years old. " If the 
child is deformed," said the laws of the Twelve Ta- 
bles, "let the father, without delay, with his own 
hand kill the child {puerum pater necato). If it be 
weak, let him expose it." This, we have seen,- was 
approved by Plutarch. The sage Seneca, in his 
treatise " On Anger," quietly says : " Let the bad be 
removed from human society and cease to be, some- 
how or other. ¥e put mad dogs out of the way. 
We kill the savage ox. "We drown children if they 
are weak or monstrously deformed."* Tertullian, 
in his own inimitable strain, appeals to the chief 
magistrates and judges of the Roman Empire : " How 
many are there even, among you who kill their own 
children ! Different kinds of death — cruelly suffo- 
cating in water, or exposing to cold, starvation, and 
clogs."f Others were kept for degradation worse 
than death 4 He created a new safety, drew a pro- 
tecting circle round their sacred helplessness, who 
said, " Suffer little children to come unto Me." § 

In yet another direction the words of Jesus were 
creative. The expositors of the Law did not so much 
expound, as overcloud and overlay, it. He reduced 
all commentary to its essential principles. || Prayer 
was caged within the wire of routine, bound by the 
cords of verbal ligatures. He opened the cage and 



* Seneca, " De Ira," lib. i. 15. t Tertullian, " Apolog." is. 
X Justin, "Apolog." xxvii. § Matt. xix. 14. 



|| Matt. v. 21 ; ix. 13- 



PKIMAEY CONVICTIONS 249 

cut the string, that the bird might fly towards heav- 
en. He created a new science of prayer by a few 
short sentences.* He wrote no book, and drew out 
no system ; but He left the productive germs from 
which a true science of theology has been drawn 
out. Millions of penitents find the peace and con- 
secration of a new life in laying the burden of their 
sins upon One who has borne it. Millions of believ- 
ers pass into the dark valley with a hope stronger 
than death, because they have cast themselves upon 
One whose death is their life. Christendom lives 
and dies upon one of His creative words — " The Son 
of man came to minister, and to give His life a 
ransom for many." f He had but to breathe a few 
words on the air, and, in unending succession, mar- 
tyrs spring forward to lead the " forlorn hopes " of 
the army of the Cross, fearing but one thing, lest 
He may be ashamed of them ; £ hoping greatly but 
one thing, that the Captain's voice may make music 
in their hearts, and the Captain's smile, that magic 
smile, fall with its sunshine upon their brows. 

Jesus, then, spoke creative words. " "Words, words, 
words," is the weary answer to the question, " "What 
do you read ?" § Some writers are able to breathe a 
spirit of life into them. 

" The song that stirs a nation's heart 
Is in itself a deed." 

But as the deeds of tbe Incarnate Word are words, 
so His words are deeds. They are not merely spir- 



* Matt, vi: 5, 13. J Mark viii. 38. 

t Mark x. 45. § " Hamlet," act ii. sc. 2. 



250 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

itual, but " spirit " ; not merely " living," but " life." * 
" Thou hast the words of eternal life" f — words that 
are pregnant with life, and give life to us. The lan- 
guage of the Psalmist, as he surveys the goodness 
of the Lord in creation, is fulfilled in a new sense 
in the new world which Christ's breath has called 
into existence — in the Church which it has con- 
structed ; in the graces which it has bestowed ; in 
the atmosphere of devotion to the sick, tenderness 
to children, largeness of understanding of God's 
law, sublime spontaneousness and familiarity of 
prayer, consolidated belief, sweetness of present ac- 
ceptance, which it has prepared for Christendom. 
" By the word of the Lord were the heavens made ; 
and all the host of them by the breath of His 
mouth. He spake, and it was done ; He command- 
ed, and it stood fast." So, looking forth upon this 
new world, faith cries, " Thou sendest forth Thy 
spirit, they are created ; and Thou renewest the 
face of the earth." ^ "We understand the connec- 
tion of attributes when He desires ,His servant to 
write Himself, " these things saith the Amen, the 
faithful and true witness." Words such as these, 
which speak thus personally, thus profoundly, must 
be creative, and so He adds, " the beginning of the 
creation of God."§ 



* John vi. 63. I am entirely unconvinced of the propriety 
of adopting the reading here which would compel us to trans- 
late " the words which I have spoken," and thus restrict the ap- 
plication to the words of the immediate context. 

t John vi. 68. J Ps. xxxiii. 6, 9 ; civ. 30. § Apoc. iii. 14. 



PEIilARY CONVICTIONS 251 

1. But life reveals itself not only by words, but 
works. If Jesus spoke as God, if His words were di- 
vine, what of His works ? I am speaking here of his 
miracles, and they bear the impress of divinity. Men 
talk of " their command over nature." But man, 
after all. is at most (in Bacon's words) " the min- 
ister and interpreter of Nature," and his power, like 
his knowledge, is bounded by his observation of her 
processes and laws. Man's "command of nature" 
is language of a pompous and self-deceiving strain. 
He really compasses his wishes by a thoughtful and 
dexterous obedience. The "fairytales of science" 
are mechanical in their essence. The " beneficent 
miracles" of Pasteur or Tyndall are as unlike mira- 
cles as can be, except in so far as they excite ad- 
miration for the keenness and tenacity which has 
read so many ciphers and guessed so many rid- 
dles. 

Such command as man possesses over nature is 
bounded by two impassable barriers. It is ham- 
pered by conditions, the loss or removal of which 
reduces the worker of miracles to the position of 
his unscientific ancestors. It is absolutely beaten 
back and rendered impotent when the experimen- 
talist is unable to work along the line of law, or 
when he comes to deal with the nature of material 
substances. 

Xow, assuming the miracles recorded by the 
evangelists to be facts, they are also divine facts. 
Christ showed a direct power over nature. He 
bent His will to the laws of nature and the mate- 
rial substance of bodies. At Cana of Galilee, He 



252 PKIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

compressed into a few moments the whole process, 
usually so prolonged, of the growth of the vine, 
the expression of the juice, and its fermentation. 
The miracle was looked upon by St. John as some- 
thing more than a fact, and a wonderful fact. It 
was a divine fact. " He manifested forth His 
glory." 

Or, let us take the two miracles in the early part 
of the sixth chapter of St. John. The walking on 
the waters is the pendant to the feeding of the five 
thousand. The two taken together meet precisely 
the two points where human command over nature 
ceases. 

Consider the walking on the sea to His disciples, 
and that which follows : " He saith unto them, It 
is I ; be not afraid. They were willing, therefore, 
to receive Him into the boat ; and straightway the 
boat was at the land whither they were going."* 
How are we to understand this ? Not merely that 
they desired to take Him in, but that their wish 
was instantaneously accompanied by their safe ar- 
rival. At the moment when they received Him 
the boat was at the point to which their course was 
directed. The lake was nearly six miles across. 
There was probably still a mile, or a mile and a 
half, of stormy water to cross. Are we to suppose 
that, after that wondrous march, He was to take 
His seat like an ordinary passenger ? Nay ; there 
was to be no more " tormenting" f of the little boat, 
no more " agony "$ of rowing. He communicated 



John vi. 20, 21. t Matt. xiv. 24. J Mark vi. 48. 



PEIilAKY CONVICTIONS 253 

to the boat and to the waters the power possessed 
by His will. " This, and the lulling of the storm," 
cries Strauss, "are but mean conquests over the 
waves compared with steam navigation." If it is 
intended that a regular steam service across the 
lake would be a greater convenience to passengers 
who are led to make the transit, that an acre of 
machinery in a transatlantic steamer is a bigger 
thing than the fisher's boat, Strauss is quite right. 
But machinery liable to be paralyzed by the failure 
of coal or the breaking of the piston-rod is utterly 
mean and insignificant compared with that direct, 
immediate, divine power over nature and natural 
law. 

So is it in other departments. A word, a touch, 
a material basis of the most apparently insignifi- 
cant character, is enough for Him. He heals dis- 
eases, He raises the dead, He ascends to heaven. 
Miracles are natural to Him. All the miracles 
which He did are nothing compared with the mira- 
cle which He is." He condescends to lay little 
stress on them. For others they may be por- 
tents, wonders, signs.f For Him they are simply 
" works," X the natural accompaniments of His rev- 
elation in the doings of human life — the things 
which it was a matter of course for Him to do. 
Man acts upon matter by labor, by bodily contact, 
by application or composition of natural forces ; 



* Isa. ix. 6. t Heb. ii. 4. 

I "Jesus himself calls them works oftener than signs; for in 
His eyes they were not miracles."— Bengel, on John v. 20. 



254 PEIMAKT CONVICTIONS 

Christ, by His word and will. That is, He works as 
God.* 

2. The Death of Christ proves that He is God. 

There are various types of death among men 
which, in their several degrees, are beautiful or 
glorious. 

There is that sort of death of which Jacob's is 
the precedent in Scripture, f Some old man has 
fulfilled his duties in life with honorable rectitude. 
He is observed by those nearest to him to be slowly 
breaking clown. The love that watches over him 
cannot deny that he is changed. Some sudden 
change of temperature brings on bronchitis. For 
the last time he lies down upon the bed from which 
he shall never rise. His children gather round, and 
hear his last low words of blessing. They receive 
their last Communion together. Humbly, yet glad- 
ly, he commends his sinful yet redeemed soul into 
his Eecleemer's hands. How well we know and rev- 
erence that empty chair I The after-glow of the sun- 
set of that life lingers on our horizon when the stars 
are out and our night is on. This is a beautiful 
death. But it is commonplace (thank God !), as many 
beautiful things often are — the common sample of 
the death-beds of a thousand homes. Every calen- 



* It may be said that others, according to Scripture, worked 
miracles. But they never claimed to be God, or as God. Note, 
too, the effort and wrestling in prayer of creatures pleading with 
God, or acting merely as His delegates. Of Moses (Exod. vii. 
3) ; of Elijah (1 Kings xvii. 21) ; of Peter (Acts is. 40). 

t Gen. xlix. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 255 

clar of a Christian heart has some such saint's day. 
Yet such a beautiful death is a human death, emphat- 
ically. There is a death of another kind. A great 
battle is fought. A Wolfe or a Nelson falls. As the 
biographer of the great admiral writes — " he could 
scarcely have departed in a brighter blaze of glory 
if he had been taken away by a chariot of fire." 
Such a death is a glorious death. But there may 
be little of heaven round it after all. More emphat- 
ically still it is a human death, though it be a glori- 
ous death. Yet another death — the only one, I think, 
which has ever been compared with that of Jesus. 
It has the advantage of a narrative in mere style and 
literary genius infinitely above the evangelists'. The 
world has never forgotten the cup of poison, taken 
when the sun was still upon the hill-tops ; the rough 
jailer's beautiful witness to the noblest, gentlest, best, 
who ever came into the place ; the cold creeping up 
to the heart ; the weeping friends ; and the hand of 
Crito closing the philosopher's eyes and mouth. It 
is the picture of a wonderful man wonderfully drawn, 
but still the picture of a man, and not without lines 
of repulsive hardness. - Or yet again another death. 



* "On entering we found Socrates just released from chains, 
and Xantippe, -whom you know, sitting by him, and holding 
his child in her arms. When she saw us she uttered a cry, and 
said, as women will, ' O Socrates, this is the last time that either 
you will converse with your friends or they with you.' Socrates 
turned to Crito and said, 'Crito, let some one take her away.' 
Some of Crito's people accordingly led her away, crying out 
and beating herself. And when she was gone" — then follows 
a philosophical discussion on pleasure and pain (" Phaedo," 60. 



256 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

A confessor of Jesus dies for Him. He falls asleep, 
like Stephen, amidst a shower of stones. He dies 
like the poor Chinese Christian a year or two ago, 
beaten and bruised to pieces. " Sorry ?" asked the 
missionary. " Oh, no ! how glad — only sorry that 
I have done so little for Jesus." * An English re- 
former stands up at the stake — "a comely sire as 
one shall see, and washes his hands in the fire." 
All these kinds of death are beautiful or heroic or 
sage or saintly. But they are human. 

The death of Jesus is divine, and its divinity con- 
sists in three things. 

(1) It was a foreseen and predicted death, foreseen 
and predicted by Himself. 

In the Synoptical Evangelists the Cross is half 
hidden up to the Transfiguration — half hidden only ; 
for the first mention of the word in the New Testa- 
ment is a good deal earlier. f But St. John lets us 
see how deeply His death was present to Him all 
along. At the first Passover of His ministry He 
speaks of the destroying of the " temple of His 
body." X To Nicodemus He announces the des- 
tined " lifting up " — the fulfilment of the type of 
the lifted serpent in the wilderness. § All through 
the great discourse in the sixth chapter the scarlet 
thread is interwoven. || The very kind of death is 



Jowett's "Dialogues of Plato," vol. i. p. 403. Contrast John 
xix. 25, 2G). 

* A fact told me by the missionary who commended this 
martyr's soul to God. 

t Matt. x. 38. \ John ii. 18-21. $ John iii. 14, 15. 

|| See especially verse 51. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 257 

absolutely known to Him. He deals with His future 
as men deal with their past. Yet, humanly speak- 
ing, it was a most uncertain issue. He might be 
taken off by an assassin's wild stroke. Stoning 
seemed to be the most likely form of execution for 
one who called Himself the Son of God. The wind 
of opinion might suddenly shift with that fierce and 
fickle populace, and they might claim the Son of 
David for their King. Yet He never falters in His 
assured conviction, in His steady, unfailing fore- 
sight." The reader will note that this is entirely 
different from these mere presentiments of death 
which are sometimes, no doubt, as extraordinary as 
they are pathetic. A brave officer is ordered abroad 
for a campaign. On his voyage out his heart turns 
to his family, to his wife and children. After he 
lands, before going into action, he writes tender 
words in the light of an eternal world. They 
reach us when the hand is cold that traced the 
lines, when the eyes are closed that were half- 
blinded with the salt mist of love. "We read the 
presentiment into a prophecy, the felt probability 
into a certainty. Yet, in truth, such anticipations 
are generally vague enough. Hundreds have writ- 
ten such letters for whom they have not been ful- 
filled. It was not so with Christ. In the army of 
the greatest of all human captains there was a regi- 
ment, at the head of whose list was the name of one 
brave soldier, called first whenever the roll was 
called, with the addition of " killed upon the field of 



3Iatt. x. 88; xx. 18; xxvi. 2 ; John viii. 
17 



258 PRIMARY CONWICTIOXS 

battle." So stood the name of the Son of God in 
His own hearing every day of His life. 

(2) This brings us to the second divine character- 
istic of the death of Jesus. As it was foreknown 
by Him, so was it perfectly /"/m It was a willing 
self-sacrifice. 

In Holman~ Hunt's picture Jesus is represented 
in a Syrian cabin. As the Carpenter rests on the 
beam, the shadow of One with arms outstretched 
on a cross is thrown forward on the floor. There 
is truth in the conception on which this is founded, 
though the particular form may be too boldly fan- 
ciful to form the basis of a work of Christian art. 

What an aspect this absolutely foreknown death 
must have given to all His life ! What intensity 
it must have thrown into His sacrifice ! What pa- 
thetic emphasis it must have imparted to the proph- 
ecy, what wailing music to the psalm ! What hints 
may have been given by circumstances of life and 
aspects of the landscape to that soul which was so 
exquisitely sensitive to symbols, for which nature was 
so full of life ! Two friends were, a few years ago, 
walking on a summer evening, near Edinburgh, over 
a quarry in the hill ; a crane used by the workmen 
stood out in the strange pathetic light which we see 
fading with a soft regret. The friends looked at 
each other with a solemn gaze, and simultaneously 
whispered " Calvary !" * How many such hints must 
He have seen, not only in book and rite and sacri- 



* The incident is told by Dr. Brown, author of "Horse Suc- 
cessivse." 



PEIMAJJY CONVICTIONS 259 

fice, but in earth and sky. " His life was, indeed, a 
long going forth to death." * 

The entire willingness, the death chosen with per- 
fect freedom, is quite exceptional. There are a few 
who, in peculiar circumstances, know for a consider- 
able time that they are doomed. There is generally 
some implied regret, some word of natural bitter- 
ness, some more or less feverish emotion. Bat Jesus 
speaks with perfect quietness — " Behold, we go up 
to Jerusalem ; and the Son of man shall be delivered 
unto the chief priests, and unto the scribes ; and 
they shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver 
Him to the Gentiles, and they shall mock Him, and 
shall scourge Him, and shall spit upon Him, and 
shall kill Him." f ]No wonder that, as " He kept 
going before," they were " amazed " at that perfect, 
elastic, joyful willingness. Xor had want of power, 
submission to inevitable fatality, any part in this 
attitude. All that history tells of the ascendency 
of the magnetism of moral force, of a command- 
ing personality, of Marius, Leo, Gordon, pales be- 
fore one simply told incident — "When, therefore, 
He said unto them, I am He, they went backward, 
and fell to the ground." ^ A panic seized the sol- 
diers of a Eoman cohort at the sight of one un- 
armed man. 

This willingness to meet predicted death is de- 
clared by Himself with language of astonishing em- 
phasis. "The Good Shepherd giveth His life for 
the sheep "; " I lay down my life for the sheep "; 



Bengel. t Mark x. 33, 34. % John xviii > 6 - 



260 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

" Therefore cloth My Father love Me, because I lay 
down My life. . . . Ko man taketh it from Me, but 
I lay it down of Myself." * 

And this perfect willingness is consistently pre- 
served in every incident of .the narrative of the Cru- 
cifixion in the four evangelists. To the bravest 
death is a tyrant, the " king of terrors." f His 
felt grasp is "the fell arrest of the grim sergeant, 
Death." Prometheus was fastened to his rock by 



* John x. 11, 15, 17, 18; Ps. xl. 6, 7, 8. This great psalm 
occupies a place in Revelation which is not always perceived. 
" Lo, I come," says the Redeemer ; " in the volume of the book 
it is written of Me." What is the scroll of which He speaks ? 
Scarcely the Pentateuch; and there was no other prophetic 
Scripture to which David could have referred in his day. 
David had another volume in his eye and head and heart, as 
the Ifessice syngrapha — the very psalm which was just written. 
From that moment it was bound, as it were, with a new incum- 
bence on Him who was to be our sacrifice to do God's will. 
With that eye of His, which reads all spiritual truth through 
and through, He sees the inadequacy of sacrifice, the divine 
weariness with it. Humanity in its highest idea presented be- 
fore God the sacrifice of a perfect human will — this was God's 
way of bringing man to Himself. An obedience without a flaw, 
in mortal flesh, was required. "Lo, I come to do Thy will, O 
God ; in the volume of the book it is written of Me." By the 
very words written upon the very scroll the pledge was given. 
The Messiah's motto is chosen, "I come." It is the Ich dien 
of the heir of all things, the everlasting Son of the Father. It 
is the secret of His sacrifice, and His Father's acceptance of 
it. "Non mors sed voluntas sponte morientis" ("Witness of 
the Psalms," pp. 243, 244). 

t It may be well in these days to refer some readers to Bil- 
dad's words (Job xviii. 14). 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 261 

Force and Necessity. The great old English poet, 
who saw things so freshly, describes death thus, 

" When from his feet up to his face was come 
The cold of death that had him overcome." 

The dying Hamlet says that "the potent poison 
quite o'ercrows his spirit." In this death is no over- 
coming or overcrowing. " Jesus yielded up the 
ghost," literally "sent forth His spirit,"* sa} T s St. 
Matthew. Sometimes a dying person shows ex- 
tra ordinary strength — almost, at the last moment, 
half rising from the pillow. But the loud, clear 
voice is, I take it, never heard. In the plenitude of 
manhood, in the moment of triumph, with a shout 
of victory, He willingly commends His spirit into 
His Father's hands. The centurion, who must have 
seen many men die, felt, and was surprised into own- 
ing, that there was something divine here. " Truly, 
this man was the Son of God." f 

(3) There is a third characteristic about the death 
of Jesus. Among the seven last words there is One 
astonishing omission. 

There is one moral phenomenon which must have 
struck the most careless observer. The holiest men 
are always those who express most strongly their con- 
sciousness of their own sinfulness. It is natural that 
it should be so. The versifier who is perfectly sat- 



* Matt, xxvii. 50. (Cf. Mark xv. 37; Luke xxiii. 46; John 
xix. 30.) Iso word in any case inconsistent with voluntary de- 
mission. 

t Mark xv. 39. 



262 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

isfied with his own productions may have a knack 
of rhyme, but he is no poet. If he were, his sweet- 
est lines would be but "the whetstone of the teeth, 
monotony on wire," compared with that ideal har- 
mony which sounds in his soul and mocks his efforts 
to reproduce it. The artist or sculptor whose pict- 
ure or statue seems to him to have attained perfec- 
tion is self-convicted of low views and a narrow 
aim. "With the true artist, no chisel is fine enough 
to " cut the breath " of his thought,* no marble is 
pliant enough to express his radiant vision, no can- 
vas can fix 

"The light that never was on sea or land, 
The consecration and the poet's dream." 

He who has no noble dissatisfaction with his work, 
no restless effort after an unattained and unattainable 
excellence, may have smartness and dexterity, but 
he has not genius. Even so, the man whose efforts 
after moral excellence do not show him the moral 
law ever towering over his head, may have a small 
and mechanical regularity of conduct, but he is des- 
titute of holiness. The holiest men, of the Hebrew 
race in particular, have been loudest in confessing 
their own sinfulness. To which of the Old Testa- 
ment saints shall we turn ? In presence of the Lord 
Abraham owns himself to be but dust and ashes. If 



* " What finest chisel 

Could ever yet cut breath ?" 

—Shakespeare, " Cymbeline. 



PRMAKY COXVICTIOXS 263 

there are some of David's notes which, swell upward' 
in the cathedral as if they would burst the groined 
roof over our heads, there are others which wail 
from the depths. "When he comes to the ground of 
his acceptance before God, he cannot stay himself 
upon his sin-stained works. He exclaims, " Blessed 
is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin."* 
To this rule there is but one exception. There is 
One who can bare His breast to His enemies and 
say, " I do always those things that please the 
Father"; "which of you convinceth Me of sin?"f 
He can go further ; before He crosses the brook of 
Kedron, in those solemn moments when the holiest 
men have told us that lives, which before appeared 
strongly solid, seem to crack and splinter like break- 
ing ice, He can lift up His calm and trustful eyes 
and say, " I have glorified Thee upon earth ; I have 
finished the work Thou gavest Me to do." ^ "With 
us every additional light of self-knowledge brought 
into the chamber of the heart throws a new shadow 
on the wall. With Him all the lights that are placed 
there never cast a single shadow. And, depend upon 
it, no mote could have floated upon the sunny side 
of His purity without being detected by His eagle 
eye. The least speck or taint of sin would seem to 
Him to have blackened the raiment that was white 
as snow. It is a law of morality that, as we grow 
more truly moral, the sense of duty becomes more 
minute, more pervasive, more exigent, more intoler- 



Ps. xxxii. 1, 2. f John viii. 29, 4G. J John xyii. 4. 



264 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

ant, and, in consequence, more self -condemnatory. 
But He who had the highest sense of duty which 
was ever entertained, proclaimed that He had at- 
tained the height of His own conception. 

He died as He lived, without confession of sin, for 
He had no sin to confess. And knowing holiness 
as He knew it, this implies a consciousness that He 
was divine. 

Rousseau once wrote in one of his better moments 
that "if the death of Socrates was that of a sage, 
the death of Jesus was that of a God." It may be, 
too probably, that he wrote not as one who adores, 
but as one who admires. Bitter epigrams on Rous- 
seau's sentence were not wanting. " It may be a 
pretty turn," some one said ; " but then, unluckily, it 
is absurd." But He who in one undivided Person 
is God and Man, who died His death, is so different 
from all others that the paradox of Rousseau is lit- 
erally true. To the vast body of evidence for the 
Divinity of Jesus the Cross adds its contribution. 
He who died there alone, of all the millions who 
ever passed into the dark shadow, by a death per- 
fectly foreknown by Him, accepted, with entire will- 
ingness, and (being, as He was, the holiest of men) 
without a half-syllable of complaint or one word of 
conscious confession, proves by His very death that 
He is God. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 265 



II 

SUGGESTIONS OF HISTORY 

Christendom proves that Christ is God. 

1. Let us first look at the complex fact called 
Christendom. This fact is not an isolated thing. It 
is not one miracle, like the turning of water into 
wine ; it is a concatenation of miracles. It is a mi- 
raculous noon which has had a miraculous dawn. 
This phenomenon of Christendom was foretold. It 
occupies a large space on the prophetic canvas — from 
Moses to Malachi. Still, as stroke by stroke pro- 
jected in space rather than in time, the martyr im- 
age of Messiah is slowly drawn, until, at last, a cross 
rises dimly from the mist of ages, and One hangs 
thereon with pierced hands and feet, smitten by 
some mysterious wrath, and wailing out some un- 
imaginable sorrow. In the shadowy background 
there are lines of light that deepen with intensest 
lustre over the people who sit in darkness and the 
shadow of death. Christendom is predicted by 
Christ. It may be easy for one who pla} 7 s with 
words as children play with feathers to state that 
"He did not know sufficient of the Gentiles to 
found anything solid upon their conversion." Yet, 
not to speak of type or parable, He foretold a clay, 
when " neither on this mountain nor yet at Jerusa- 
lem should men worship the Father "—when there 
should be one fold and one Shepherd. On that 
morning when He led through the silent streets of 



266 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

Jerusalem the little band whom He had won from 
the world before He was parted from them, He gave 
them commission to go and teach all nations. Here 
is one aspect of the fact of Christendom which re- 
quires to be accounted for. It was foretold. When 
•we pass from the prediction to the fact, we must esti- 
mate the probability of the cause to which we are 
to assign it by the forces which Christianity had at 
its command, and those which it had to oppose and 
overthrow. 

The opposing forces were fivefold. There was the 
material force of the empire of the Caesars, not qui- 
escent and resisting solely by its own dead weight, 
as in India now, but alarmed and enraged, and fling- 
ing itself with all its colossal weight upon the infant 
Church. There was the intellectual force of specu- 
lative philosophies which, for learning, acuteness, 
and solidity, have never been exceeded by Oxford or 
Edinburgh, by Paris or Berlin. There was the so- 
cial force of rites associated with every circumstance 
of human life, and twining round all that is best and 
all that is worst in the human heart — its joys and its 
sorrows, its licentiousness and its greatness. There 
was the aesthetic force of art and poetry — the mar- 
ble and the picture, the golden songs, whose sun- 
light is so fadeless and whose music is. so perfect. 
There was the spiritual force which is always wield- 
ed by ancient and established superstitions. Con- 
sider, then, the message with which it confronted 
those formidable opponents. 

That message was the "preaching of the cross" 
— more literally the " word which is the word of 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 267 

the cross." •• For us it is almost impossible to realize 
the associations which clustered round that word. 
For us it sparkles on the crown of monarchs ; it is 
embroidered upon the flag ; it rises over our village 
churches and surmounts our cathedral spires ; our 
dead repose with its shadow projected over them in 
the summer evenings. The very name reminds us 
of a sublime sacrifice, of a divine self-denial. As 
we hear it spoken the echo of hymns floats sweetly 
through our hearts ; and if we be Christians in more 
than name, we think of an eternal rock on which we 
may stand, of an infinite purity which can expel 
our defilement, of an infinite tenderness on which 
our weariness may rest. Its original force we can 
only represent to ourselves by some vulgar carica- 
ture of language. To a Roman ear it would have 
sounded as unnatural to hear it associated with 
aught of dignity or honor as it would sound to us 
if we heard of a guillotine of the Legion of Honor, 
a Yictoria gallows, or a Reel-rope flag. That mes- 
sage, again, was one which flattered no pride, held 
parle} 7 " with no passion, gave quarter to no sin. If, 
as the poet says, 

" the way is smooth 
For power that travels icith the human heart," 

the way must have been very rough for that which, 
humanly speaking, was weakness travelling against 
the human heart. 

Nor was the message projected so far by the 



* 1 Cor. i. 18. 



268 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

strength of human hands. Our first feeling in read- 
ing the apostolic fathers and early apologists is, 
perhaps, one of something like pain. Yet it need 
not be so. If we found in Ignatius or Polycarp or 
Justin the legal acumen of Athanasius,the glowing 
declamation of Chrysostom, the learning of Jerome, 
the policy of Ambrose, the infinitely tender and 
subtle eloquence of the philosophical Augustine, we 
might suppose that we had found a solution of the 
triumph of the Cross. It was not so. It was some- 
thing else than intellectual or literary power which 
made the barbarism of the tent-maker and the fish- 
erman triumph over the syllogisms of Athens. The 
victory was in the weapon, not in the hands that 
wielded it.* 



* I may be allowed to cite here a singular passage from a 
leading member of the Anthropological Society : 

" All the narrow skulls of this kind known to me, where the 
spots that they were found had been well examined, thus be- 
long to the same period — the period of the decline of the Ro- 
man Empire and the introduction of Christianity into Switzer- 
land. They are, in small proportions, mixed with other skulls, 
which, as comparative examination teaches, have preserved 
their type from a comparatively recent period down to the 
present day. "We are thus permitted to suppose that these nar- 
row skulls which approach the simious type must have belonged 
to immigrants who arrived only in small numbers, and whose 
type was not propagated, but soon disappeared. But we can 
trace no other immigration at that period than that of Christian 
missionaries, who, according to tradition, came principally from 
Ireland. It is not so very improbable that the new religion, be- 
fore which the flourishing Roman civilization relapsed into a 
state of barbarism, should have been introduced by people in 



PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 269 

But the Church had a twofold miracle to work — 
a miracle of construction as well as of destruction ; 
a new society to mould, as well as an old society to 
subvert. The frightful severity of the old family 
life had been succeeded by a much more frightful 
laxity. Woman, the destined purifier of nations, 
had become herself impure. Crouched in the cor- 
ner of every home sat a thing, without home, with- 
out rights, without hope, called the slave ; the victim 
of every caprice, the safety-valve of every passion, 
the tool of every lust ; yet, by Heaven's righteous 
retribution; destined to scourge his master with a 
fiercer lash than ever was laid on his own back. 
This work of construction Christianity wrought out 
as effectively as the other. It restored the family 
life by restoring the marriage relation. It made 
every Christian home a retreat where purity might 
repose in the bosom of order. It created that type 
of Christian gentleness which we see in our mothers 



whose skulls the anatomist finds simious characters so well 
developed, and in which the phrenologist finds the organ of 
veneration so much enlarged. I shall, in the meanwhile, call 
those simious narrow skulls of Switzerland apostles' skulls, as 
I imagine that in life they must have resembled the type of 
Peter the Apostle as represented in Byzantine art" ("Lectures 
on Man, His Place in Creation, and in the History of the Earth," 
by Dr. Carl Voght). 

The temptation to raise a laugh at an apostle is, of course, 
irresistible to some minds. But, granting that the measurement 
of an " apostolic skull " in Byzantine art is perfectly correct, 
the epiestion arises, How did men with ''simious skulls" over- 
throw the Roman civilization ? 



270 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

and sisters and wives. It touched the brow and 
heart of the slave — not just snapping his chains and 
then leading him forth to a freedom he could not 
use. True progress is not revolutionary, except as a 
means to an end. But it first touched the slave's 
soul, and taught him to raise his branded brow, and 
to know that he was a freeman that Christ had 
made free — free from the yoke of sin, and, therefore, 
free one day to walk as a king. And then it touched 
the master's soul, and reminded him of the dignity 
of the brother whom Christ had redeemed and who 
said with him " Our Father." Thus were the slaves' 
fetters broken, not by a revolution, but by instilling 
principles inconsistent with slavery. The Christian 
Church did not act like one who goes forth in the 
winter frost with a pick-axe to free the river from 
the ice. But she was like the breath of the thaw, 
and did her gradual work until the ice of ages 
snapped and cracked, and the rushing waters swept 
on with their song of liberty. 

2. In this Christendom — thus foretold, victorious, 
constructed, compacted by a power which must have 
been divine — Christ still reignsjiearly nineteen hun- 
dred years after His crucifixion. 

He reigns over the intellect of man. I say, em- 
phatically, He. Human thinkers or teachers do not 
really govern human thought. They may domineer 
over a society, like Dr. Johnson ; over a school, like 
Bentham. But outside a limited school, for a lim- 
ited time, they are unknown or unheeded. No one 
long takes things at their hand or word. But Jesus 
does not propose a doctrine obviously and superfi- 



PRIMARY C0XVICTI0XS 271 

cially self-evident. He does not present a systematic 
body of evidences, absolutely irresistible, upon pure- 
ly logical principles. As in the days of His flesh, 
there are those who do not believe Him, much less 
believe in Him. There are those who not only deny 
His divinity, but question His veracity. - But those 
who accept and believe in Him must, and do, take 
His teachings from Him, upon His own word and 
authority. f They must begin by making an act of 
faith, not in abstract truths, but in One who is the 
Truth. Founders of false religions are, of course, 
credited by their disciples with the possession of 
ultimate truth ; but it is simply as passive recipients 
of a revelation from God, not as truth itself. The 
sway of Mohammed or the Buddha — especially the 
latter— is over one or two classes or families of minds, 
which have not received the highest human culture. 
Jesus reigns over the thought and intellect of vast 
communities of men, of the most widely different 
characteristics. He is not too lofty for the meanest, 
nor too lowly for the highest. He reigns over the 
intellect of Christendom as its God. Augustine, 
Aquinas, Dante, Tasso, Eacine, Milton, Shakespeare, 
Pascal, Bacon, Leibnitz, Xewton, Kapoleon, Cousin, 
Maine de Biran, Mebuhr, Guizot, Wellington, have 
bowed before Him. Among the few men of the 
first rank in the hierarchy of intellect who deny His 



* John v. 38. Cf. 1 John v. 10. 

t Such is Peter's method. "We have believed, and 'know'' 1 
(John vi. 6S). How truly Petrine then that touch, "Add to 
your faith virtue; and to virtue, knowledge" ! (2 Pet. i. 5). 



272 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

divinity, some do so with the misgiving of a sus- 
pended speculation ; few, indeed, are those of the 
number who stand among the first in the ranks of 
immortality. All nations, in proportion as they re- 
cede from Him, fall back from their place in history. 
Of those nations which lie outside the tidal flow of 
His influence, the life is stunted and imperfect. 

Jesus reigns over human affection, as well as hu- 
man intellect. The circle of love which any human 
being can hope to fill is narrow and temporary. 
But love towards Jesus endures, undiminished in 
volume, unimpaired in intensity. The eighteenth 
century is bound to Him by a chain of love as ada- 
mantine, yet as delicate, as the first. This reign of 
love is immense, inconceivable in extent. Its subtle 
influence encompasses, in many cases deeply and 
deathlessly penetrates, three hundred millions of 
souls. Nations are separated, ambitions and inter- 
ests clash, churches are divided by prejudices or by 
something graver ; but, wherever He is known and 
invoked, east or west, by Catholic or Protestant, in 
cathedral or meeting-house, the love of Jesus is a 
bond of union, a common source of light and life. 
For Him sacrifices are made and lives laid down. 
" The love of Christ constraineth us ; because we 
thus judge, that if One died for all, then were all 
dead : And that He died for all, that they which 
live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but 
unto Him which died for them, and rose again." * 
Constrained by the irresistible sweetness of that 



2 Cor. v. 14, 15. 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 273 

love, missionaries start forth for the ends of the 
earth ; devoted women minister in hospitals ; visit- 
ors pierce into festering alleys ; sorrowers and peni- 
tents unburden their secrets to Him and find peace. 
Every minute of every day and night some dying 
soul invokes His name with a smile of deathless 
love. It was this unique capacity of awakening, of 
perpetuating, of intensifying love, which sank so 
deeply into the great spirit of JSapoleon at St. He- 
lena, which made him sum up his memorable argu- 
ment thus — " General Bertrand, I am a good judge 
of men : I tell you this was not a man." 

Finally, as Jesus reigns over the intellects and af- 
fections of men by the belief which He demands and 
the love which He elicits, so does He reign over the 
spiritual nature by the worship which He inspires. 

Jesus was a Man of lowly station, of a race which 
was unpopular and despised. Yet, as we have seen, 
immediately after His departure from earth He 
was followed by prayers of adoration. After a few 
centuries that adoration had acquired an enormous 
volume, and all civilized humanity worshipped Him 
as God. Objectors faintly whisper something of 
epidemic idolatry. But, in proportion as this wor- 
ship extends, idolatry disappears. Christ gave man- 
kind, for the first time, an idea of the true and liv- 
ing God ; they possess it, and worship Christ. And 
when they cease to do so, they appear inevitably 
to lose that very conception of God on behalf of 
which thev dethroned Christ.* Where Christ is 



" Whosoever denieth the Sou, the same hath not the Fa- 
18 



274 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

received as God, not only is duty exalted, but relig- 
ion is refined and spiritualized. Could a colossal 
idolatry and a religion of exquisite refinement and 
spirituality thrive together and fade together? 

I conclude by asking and answering a question. 

There was One who was born, lived, died, as men 
counted Him, a crucified Jew. He is now wor- 
shipped in every land. Born as He was in a man- 
ger, bred in a shop, dying upon a cross, the only 
civilized races of the world kneel before Him in 
adoration. 

How is this ? The answer is the same as to all 
our other questions. 

Why do the writers of the IsTew Testament call 
Him God, Son of God, Lord, Word? Why do they 
speak of Him as Eternal, Omniscient, Creator, Al- 
mighty? Why do they worship Him? Why do 
they assign to Him a sphere coextensive with hu- 
man life, thought, feeling, death, judgment, eternity? 
What is the conclusion from His words, personal, 
universal, illimitable, assertive, creative? from His 
works, which deal with the laws of nature and the 
material substances of things ? from His death, dif- 
fering from all others in being predicted, voluntary, 
based upon a sinless character? from the Christen- 
dom which He created out of the most intractable 
elements, by the most unlikely workmen — where 
He still reigns over man's intellect, love, and spirit- 
ual nature ? 

" I believe in One Lord Jesus Christ, God of God." 



ther: but lie that acknowledged the Son hath the Father 
also" (1 John ii. 23). 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 275 

[The substance of the preceding Discussion was originally 
embodied in an Oxford Theological Prize Essay for 1850. It 
appeared in a more popular shape in a small tractate a few years 
ago, which Messrs. Cassell permit me to use freely. A writer 
possessed at once of passionate eloquence aud accurate learn- 
ing, Dr. Liddon, has made the subject his own in the unrivalled 
pages of his " Bampton Lectures." However, the materials 
gathered from Hooker, Bull, Waterland, Barrow, and from the 
writings of Athanasius and St. Augustine, for the purposes of 
his University Essay of 1850, saved the author from acting as 
the mere epitomizer of one great book. Some obligations are 
due in the latter part of this Discussion to a volume of " Con- 
ferences sur la Divinite de Jesus Christ," by Mgr. Freppel. (See 
especially Confs. II., VIII., X., XL, XII.)] 



Biscussion 11 J 



Delivered in substance in the Church of the Heavenly Rest, Thursday, 
March 31st, 1892 



A smell of blossoms o'er the mould. 



EIGHTH PRIMARY CONVICTION 

"I look for the resurrection of the body." 

"It is sown" {o-ireiperai). — 1 Cor. XV. 42. 

I 

The most pregnant of commentators on the New 
Testament packs up a depth of thought upon this 
in two words — " Verbum amoenissimum?'' "A most 
pleasant word for burial." 

" Verbum amcenissimum " — just so ! "When we 
look our last upon the mortal tenement of those we 
love, Hamlet's word hangs upon our lips and fills 
our imagination. " For by this time he stinketh," 
cried Martha to Jesus. A sickness of loathing steals 
over our nearest.* Then it was that " Jesus lifted 
up His eyes to heaven," as if He would bathe His 
spirit in the azure purity of the sky. 

The section from which our word is taken \ stands 
out even in the New Testament relatively to the 
hope of immortality with a magnificent fulness. It 
is to St. Paul what the Phaedo is to Plato, or the 
Tusculan Disputations to Cicero. Even here, as St. 
Paul dictates, he can be pityingly irritated for a 
moment. The crass stupidity, the priggish omni- 



* " Fastidium etiam apud proximos." — Bengel. 
t 1 Cor. xv. 35-40. 



280 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

science of some clever objectors, are so provoking. 
" Paul violates Christ's precept in the Sermon on 
the Mount," * it has been said. A very little Greek 
Testament is sometimes a wholesome corrective to 
very much imagination. The word is not that which 
Christ forbade. " Silly one," f cries the apostle ; 
the question was a silly one and the questioner is 
called silly ; " you who are so weak — that which you 
sow." \ Yet all the time he is full of a great love 
for sorrowing humanity, of a splendid passion to 
console and to elevate. He proceeds to point out 
an analogy between man in his revealed future and 
the vegetable world. It is in principle a foreshad- 
owing of the argument which Butler was to develop 
in his "Analogy" so many ages afterwards — an 
identity of principle in nature and grace. It is not 
that imaginative likeness to external forms of hu- 
man life which haunted Stanley in the forests of 
Equatorial Africa. It is the likeness of general 
laws, intellectual and moral rather than physical. 
(a) The first law is life through death § — the decay- 
ing bulb ; the husk at the root of the stalk ; the life 



* Matt. v. 22. t u(ppov, 1 Cor. xv. 36. 

I 6 a-iretpeis, 1 Cor. XV. 37. 

§ Tertullian 1ms developed this idea with a magnificent, if 
too exuberant, rhetoric : 

" Omnia pereundo servantur. omnia de interitu redeunt. . . . 
Omnia incipiunt cum desierunt ; ideo finiuntur ut fiant ; nihil 
deperit nisi in salutem. . . . Operibus earn prsescripsit Deus 
antequam literis; viribus praedicavit antequam vocibus. . . . 
Nee dubites Deum carnis etiam resurrectionem quern omnium 
noris restitutorem." — Apolog. XL VII., " De Res. Carnis." xix. 



PEIMAET CONVICTIONS 281 

new in form, flexible, colored, exuberant, beautiful. 
" Thou — that which thou sowest — is not made life 
unless it die." (b) Varied life — variety of flesh (" all 
flesh is not the same flesh "),* variety of organiza- 
tion^ variety of glory and beauty in heaven above 
and in earth below. \ 

Then the apostle, whose heart was so human, 
seems to touch earth again. Instead of the putre- 
faction of the charnel, he appears to breathe the 
freshness of the spring. His style kindles and di- 
lates. Logic passes into oratory, oratory into po- 
etry, poetry into the awful yet consoling influence 
of prophecy. It is the " Oraison Funebre" of a 
greater than Bossuet over all the company of the 
dead who die in Christ. The harmony of thought 
clothes itself with rhyme. Listen to the cnrelperai, 
ijeiperat, four times over : sown in corruption, raised 
in incorruption ; sown in disgrace, raised in glory ; 
sown in weakness, raised with magnificent capaci- 
ties of power ; sown with an organization adapted 
for the natural life, raised with an organization 
fitted for the spiritual life. Throughout there is a 
breath of spring flowers, a rustle of green corn- 
fields ; it is indeed " verbum amcenissimum pro se- 
pultura " ! 

" I believe in the Eesurrection of the body." 
This is the conviction of the Christian heart. Its 
proof, its sole proof, is the Eesurrection of Jesus 
Christ and His word. Here again, as so often be- 
fore, I must remind you not only w T hat the article 



* 1 Cor. xv. 39. t 1 Cor. xv. 40. \ 1 Cor. xv. 39-42. 



282 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

of the Creed necessarily implies — not only what 
it is, but what it does not imply, and what it is 
not. 

And here once more, with all my reverence for a 
great book and a great name, I am forced to protest 
against a particular hypothesis of the resurrection 
of the body, which Bishop Pearson's justly high au- 
thority has caused to be identified with the dogma 
itself in many quarters to the injury of the faith. 
Pearson asserts that every one when he confesses 
a resurrection of the body is conceived to declare 
thus much : " I am fully persuaded that the bodies 
dissolved into dust or scattered into ashes shall be 
re-collected in themselves and reunited to their 
souls, that the same flesh which lived before shall 
be revived, that the same numerical todies vjhich did 
fall shall rise. 1 ' 1 Again : " the same flesh which was 
separated from the soul at the day of death shall be 
united to the soul at the last day." But the same- 
ness of the resurrection body does not imply the 
identity of every particle which was there at the 
time of death. With the removal of this most un- 
fortunate speculation nearly all the little ribald ob- 
jections with which we are so familiar fall to the 
ground — e. g., if every atom which ever formed part 
of our corporeal investiture should be annexed to 
it, we should stand in gigantic vastness and weigh 
many tons. It has been calculated that the body 
a human being of seventy years of age could claim 
for itself would form a " colossus at least as vast as 
the statue of Liberty " ; or, in the case of the inter- 
esting cannibal, who is so useful on these occasions, 






PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 283 

there might be different claimants for the same 
body; or again, as has recently been said by a 
writer of signal ability, of whose utterance I wish 
to speak with respectful surprise, " even if we live 
to a ripe old age, and avoid being eaten or muti- 
lated ; even if we die without any perceptible dis- 
ease, the body which our friends will bury is not the 
body at its best, but at its worst. If men really be- 
lieved in the resurrection of the body, they would 
pray above all things to die in their prime. Living 
to old age would mean an eternity of decrepitude 
and decay." And the same writer speaks of these 
as " difficulties which beset the orthodox view." 
But this view was never a dogma of the faith ; its 
inconsistence with right reason was pointed out by 
the illustrious brother of St. Basil many centuries 
ago ; it was never more than the hypothesis of cer- 
tain orthodox theologians, doubted by the wise for 
the contradictions it even then was suspected of in- 
volving, and now seen to be in sharp conflict with 
our present knowledge of natural laws. 

All that faith requires us to hold about the resur- 
rection of the body is the substantial identity of the 
risen body with that which we use during our life. 
It is to be the same, in whatever sense sameness can 
be predicated of the body during any separate por- 
tions of its corporeal existence. 

But complete identity of particles is so far from 
being necessary to the complete identity of the risen 
body, that if such complete aggregation of particles 
is required to constitute identity, then there is no 
such thing as identity of body in the whole creation 



284 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

of Gocl. But there is a principle of identity running, 
through every living body, and even through the 
vegetable world. ]STo one can precisely define what 
constitutes this identity, but every one who thinks 
a little knows what it is not. It is not numerical 
identity of particles. In the long and marvellous 
history of the oak does the tree cease to be the 
same vegetable with the acorn ? In the history of 
the butterfly does the grub cease to be the same 
insect with the butterfly ? In the history of the 
man does the embryo, the body of the infant, of the 
young man, cease to be the same body with that 
of the old man? Had Lord Chatham, who was 
carried a decrepit old man swathed with flannel into 
the House of Lords, a different body from the " ter- 
rible cornet of dragoons" who shook Westminster 
with his superhuman eloquence ? IsTo. Through all 
the protracted process of growth it is the same vege- 
table, the same insect, the same man. In all three 
cases an unknown factor persists in being, of which 
we can only see certain manifestations, but cannot 
grasp the principle. It may be a few solid, inclis- 
cerptible elementary particles ; it may be an im- 
ponderable fluid, a force taking of itself by an in- 
herent virtue the form which it requires. Life does 
not come from organization, but organization from 
life. The preservation of this principle, force, or 
living energy, after the change known to us as 
death ; the reuniting of it (after a certain period) 
to the organization necessary to its ultimate perfec- 
tion, with a body which is in the truest sense the 
same body, though not consisting of identically nu- 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 285 

merical particles — this would truly be the resurrec- 
tion of the body. 

The resurrection of the body in various quarters 
(especially in certain French schools) has been said 
to present a difficulty to artistic feeling and con- 
sciousness. 

It is urged that it is grotesquely absurd to sup- 
pose bodies specifically like ours, only infinitely 
more beautiful and endowed with new powers. 
Bodily beauty (such reasoners proceed) simply 
means adaptation to organization. Thus, a body 
which is made suitable for walking would look ab- 
solutely absurd flying. It would forfeit the con- 
dition of its proper beauty by ceasing to walk. 

But this theory baldly and barely derives beauty 
from utility y and utility assuredly is not beauty. 

A number of persons combine for the laudable 
purpose of building a church. The building, we 
will say, possesses furnace-stoves, pews for decent 
slumber or comfortable criticism, a richly draped 
pulpit. Good-natured eulogy congratulates the 
friends who have achieved the performance upon 
their " beautiful church." But beautiful it is not. 
The beauty of a church lies in quite another region 
— in the non-utilitarian elevation, in the windows 
whose useless richness rather sheathes than trans- 
mits the light, in the stone whose unprofitable lace- 
work neither supports weight nor excludes cold. 

Surely (I may be excused if I turn aside from my 
subject for a single moment), surely, it is well to 
have cathedrals in your new world. An American 
visitor to "Westminster Abbey, conducted over it by 



286 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

Archbishop Trench, was confronted at the close 
with the remark, " You have nothing like this in 
your country." The American proudly and prompt- 
ly replied, "Not yet!" The archbishop felt that 
there was something great in the reply. I trust 
that you will practically show that you also feel 
this, and prove your feeling by your action. 

The sense of beauty, it has been said, never fur- 
thered the performance of a single duty. But 
beauty leads us to God. We may look at JSTiagara 
in different spirits. One of your countrymen, half 
ashamed of the awe which impressed him on his 
first visit to the Falls, exclaimed, "Well, what hin- 
ders?" What, indeed? Given such a mass of wa- 
ter, down it must come. But who endued it with 
the beauty and with the terror ; with the soft yet 
massive whiteness, such as no fuller on earth could 
full it ; with the color of malachite, emerald, sap- 
phire ; with the floating rainbows and the lunar 
glory ? Who made the heart of man such that to 
be disappointed with Niagara is to proclaim that 
you aspire to be as an angel or are content to be as 
a fool ? 

So much for the theory. But, in point of fact, we 
can see with our eyes pictured human forms float- 
ing in light. Is KaphaePs " Incarnation " grotesque 
or ugly ? 

The highest art is indeed a presentiment of the 
Resurrection life. In this it differs from the photo- 
graphic representation. Photography is the prose, 
art is the poetry, of pictorial representation. Pho- 
tography is factual ; art is ideal. Photography is 



PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 287 

of the past and present ; art is of the future. It is 
a silent prophecy of the life to come. 

It is said that in each face and form there is a 
tendency to realize an ideal type. The type is often 
broken by the intractable material with which it 
has to deal. It is marred by accident or by disease. 
It is travestied and caricatured by the fatal lines of 
lust and greed. 

Of this ideal type there are fore-gleams in clumsy 
forms and plain faces. "We see it in the living trans- 
figuration by truth, honesty, purity, in crisis mo- 
ments ; in the splendid stern light upon the heavy 
features of genius; in the face brightened by the 
light of heaven to which it looks ; in the expression 
seen on the countenances of throngs in churches or 
large gatherings when the breath of God is on the 
air. In the case of the dead there is often a pre- 
liminary stage — the expressionless white of the 
eyes, the yellow mask, the ugly rictus, the dropping 
jaw. But, for those who have lived the higher life, 
there comes one prophetic gleam before corruption 
conquers. Instead of these things, a soft, solemn 
beauty ; something calmer than sleep, lovely, yet 
awful. There are some lines which were among the 
most often quoted in the early youth of the elder 
among us. The passage, as a whole, is marred by 
Byron's besetting sins — by inequality of execution, by 
a nameless something which forces us to criticise even 
while we are still under the fascination of genius.* 



* I refer to the lines from " The Giaour," quoted in a former 
Discussion. 



288 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

In all these phenomena we see hints of the Resur- 
rection glory. " We shall be like Him, for we shall 
see Him as He is." 

II 

But, it will be urged, in all that we have so far 
said we have only grappled with a difficulty, and 
dealt with an unfitness, in the dogma which is pre- 
sented as a Christian conviction. 

What arguments are alleged on its behalf ? There 
are two, and two only. 

1. In whatever proportion the first article of the 
Creed becomes a conviction, the eleventh article will 
rest upon it. 

If there is a Creator who brought out human life 
as the crown of sensitive existence, we are assured 
that He will not fling away the feeble but sublime 
creature whom He has made. If God is " the Fa- 
ther Almighty," He will not kill His child in the 
dark. " But this only proves a purely spiritual im- 
mortality of the thinking force." Much might be 
said of the unsatisfying and illogical character of 
such a thin and impalpable immortality. But, 

2. We fall back upon the Resurrection of Jesus 
Christ. Nothing less than such a conviction about 
Him could bear the stress of such a conviction about 
ourselves and others. 

Without this, the immortality of man would be 
but a vague suspicion. We have heard, perhaps, of 
a body of " vague Christians." • They will not last 
long. Science commits suicide when she adopts a 
final creed; Religion, when she rejects one. Im- 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 289 

mortality is presaged : (a) B} T the depth of human 
love, -which would be overcharged " with au inten- 
sity of tragic sweetness" if the intensity and the 
tragedy and the sweetness were made only to be 
wasted. (If) By the prophecies of conscience, Avhich 
are the moral levers of humanity, (c) By the crea- 
tions of genius. The gifted word, or the great pict- 
ure, does not consist of just so many splashes of ink 
or daubs of paint ; it is the means by which a soul 
that still lives speaks to living souls. Behind Han- 
del's score, as it stands on a few sheets of yellow 
paper, is an infinite and eternal harmony. 

But the conviction of the Resurrection of Jesus 
and that of the resurrection of the body are bound 
together indissolubly. 

Ill 
The salutary influence of the conviction is seen 
not only in the hope which it gives, but at every 
point of the circumference of life, (a) If the body is 
to be associated with the soul in glory, if it is to be 
a partaker of the soul's dignity, it also should be 
kept pure, (b) Sacraments will be of an intensely 
deeper significance. The Eucharist, wherein our 
very bodily material organization is again and again 
brought into contact with sacramental substances, 
is " to preserve our bodies and souls unto everlast- 
ing life." It was a pious instruction of past gen- 
erations (listen to it, fashionable ladies and fast 
young men !) " every day while dressing and undress- 
ing, to think of the glorious qualities of the bodies 
which shall rise to the resurrection of life, and the 
19 



290 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

shame of those which shall rise to the resurrection 
of damnation." Purity is as inseparable from the 
conviction of the resurrection of the body as fra- 
grance from the rose, (c) Medical science, as a sci- 
ence, first really advanced and prospered in the 
atmosphere of the Creed. Has there ever been a 
Mohammedan or a Buddhist school of medicine 
worthy of the name ? 

IV 

The law of " survival of the fittest " is one of the 
generally accepted laws of natural evolution. 

Individuals of a species start with some advan- 
tage relatively to their environment. This advan- 
tage used, and made permanent by heredity in 
favored species, adds others to itself, and so on 
progressively. What is thus advantageously placed 
squeezes out other competitors. No shriek or shout 
is heard ; but hitting, as remorseless and silent as it 
is continuous, goes on through the ages. The sur- 
vivor wins one of the belts in the prize-ring of crea- 
tion, and wears it — until he too finds a slayer, 

"who slays the slayer, 
And must himself be slain." 

Science may look from her heights along the 
whole line of the animal and vegetable world. 
The battle is fought out with smokeless powder. 
The victor's silent triumph is over extinguishing 
species. 

But in the moral and spiritual sphere there is a 
traversing, there is a reversal, of this law of " sur- 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 291 

vival of the fittest " — if " fittest " is taken in the 
sense of physical and material " fittest." Conscience 
is altogether an k ' anti-Darwinian phenomenon." 

The " survival of the fittest " is, no doubt, for- 
midably apparent in successful careers. Who are 
the " fittest to survive " in such struggles \ The 
men who are stiff and who are flexible at the right >. 
time ; who know how to push and puff themselves ; 
who have good stomachs and bad hearts ; who have 
hard fists and hard heads, with adamantine self- 
will, and just so much scrupulousness as will pre- 
vent not only their inclusion in a jail, but their 
exclusion from a club. And now let us ask our- 
selves who and what is the Hero of the Gospels ? 

The "fittest to survive" in the social struggle 
has little sympathy or feeling of any kind. But the 
heart of Jesus vibrated to every touch ; every sin 
cost Him a pang ; He was the confidant of every sor- 
row; sickness was felt by Him as if His own. "Him- 
self took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses." 

The "fittest to survive" in the contests to which 
I refer has the advantages of beauty and of strength. 
But of Him it was said, " no beauty that we should 
desire Him." " His visage marred more than any 
man." And an apostle cries, "He was crucified 
through weakness." 

The " fittest to survive " in the struggles which 
place a man upon the pinnacle has selfishness. JSot 
self-will, but self-sacrifice, was the law of His life. 
There is one beautiful biography of Him in three 
words — " He pleased not Himself." There are 
touching shadows of this even in the lower creation. 



292 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

I 

A naturalist has told the sweet, pathetic tragedy of 
a piece of English gorse. The gorse was set fire to. 
The fire swept on fast, until it came to a linnet's 
nest. And the naturalist found covering the little 
brood, which were saved from the storm of fire that 
swept over them, a small black and blasted skele- 
ton, which might have been a colored and winged 
song under the blue sky had she not been " faithful 
even unto death." Small but beautiful picture of 
the love of Him who gave Himself for us ! 

So in Christ, the great Contradiction, we have the 
contradiction to the mere material law. " He was 
crucified through weakness ; yet He liveth by the 
power of God." Nay, not only He survives who is 
the unfittest • out of men He chooses the unfittest — 
He concentrates all life in Himself. " The first man 
is out of earth, made of dust ; the second Man is 
from heaven." The first man has his part in some 
lowly origin, the dust of the field ; the second Man, 
in the azure of the sky. " The first man Adam was 
made into a living soul ; but the last Adam into a 
spirit which is life-creating." - Yes ! He who had 
neither hardness nor beauty nor strength nor selfish- 
ness not only survives, He gives survival to those 
who have become unfit to survive like Himself. 

The survival of the Unfittest sits at the right hand 
of the Majesty on high. 

I have finished our present survey of the Primary 
Conviction of Christians in the two creeds of Chris- 



* 1 Cor. xv. 45. 



PRIMAEY CONVICTIONS 293 

tendom. Much has been omitted from the necessity 
of the case ; especially the conviction of the exist- 
ence of the Catholic Church, and that conviction 
which is the blessed centre of all that is truly sub- 
jective in a believing soul, which is so closely linked 
also with the central objective verities which we 
have examined — the " Forgiveness of Sins." These 
subjects would require a treatment perhaps as long 
as the whole of this present course, and bear equally 
upon the evidences of Christianity. 

I pray that we may be filled with the Church's 
spirit as she ends her creed of facts and joy, with 
her face turned triumphantly to the East— finishing, 
as she began, with life, but in this case, solely the 
life that knows no ending. " I look for the resur- 
rection of the dead, and the life of the world to 
come." * 

In closing this series of Discussions your kindness 



* 7rpoa8oKa> may, no doubt, signify the expectation either of 
hope or fear — and in the N. T. there are instances of one as 
well as of the other; but in regard to the great Hereafter one 
passage stamps it with joy (2 Pet. iii. 12-14). I am glad to note 
that the catechism of the Council of Trent, in the second of 
the twelve questions under this article, gives the following an- 
swer: "The faithful are to be admonished that by the words 
'eternal life' is not so much denoted perpetual existence (to 
which devils and wicked men are condemned) as that unend- 
ing blessedness which is to satisfy all the yearning of the bless- 
ed." A wide tract of perilous doctrine between the beginning 
and end of the catechism shall not make us unjust to the 
truth of the second, or to the noble exposition of John xvii. 3 
in the first. 



294 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

will indulge me in making some acknowledgments 
required by duty and gratitude. 

And, first, to one who is not among us to-nigkt — 
your bishop, a great prelate, preacher, and admin- 
istrator. His Christian courtesy, gentle wit, and 
earnest speech endear him to this great city. Truly 
his " way-marks " are along His Master's road. His 
invitation brought me here. If we have missed his 
presence, " eo prasfulgebat quid non videbatur." 

My next acknowledgments are due to President 
Low and the governing body of Columbia College. 
Under its present administration its intellectual life 
seems, like some generous wine, to combine the fire 
of youth with the mellowness of age. I pray that 
these addresses may subserve the spiritual ends for 
which they were intended. 

The Rev. Dr. Morgan and the officials of this 
church have devoted themselves to the lovely and 
elevating services which have so happily prepared 
our hearts for the consideration of holy truths. The 
presence of so many of my reverend brethren in their 
stately order has been at once my humiliation and 
my help. 

I thank the vast congregation, and especially the 
young men of Columbia College. My sons, it has 
often fallen to my lot to preach in the university pul- 
pits of my own land. But I have never met hearers 
so stimulating by their patience, their smiles, and, I 
think, sometimes by their tears. May you find rest 
in settled convictions of the Fatherhood of God ; of 
the Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus 
Christ ; of the holiness of Scripture ; of the Resur- 



PEIMAKY CONVICTIONS 295 

rection of the body ; and pass from forgiveness of 
sins to life everlasting ! There are two contrasts be- 
tween faith and science. In science the first prop- 
osition is true only so far as it agrees with the last ; 
in faith, the last is true only so far as it coheres 
with the first. Science commits suicide when she 
accepts a fixed creed ; Faith, when she rejects one. 



NOTE 



One who did much for a wise study of Pearson both in India 
and England writes thus of the bishop's assertions under Art. 
XI., in the " Exposition of the Creed " : " It is to be confessed 
that Bishop Pearson appears to disregard this restriction, and 
to conceive himself concerned in insisting on the material iden- 
tity of all the particles that composed the oody at the moment of 
dissolution, which tcere not themselves numerically the same with 
those which constituted it an hour before. On this point — viz., 
as to the question what it is that constitutes this identity — we 
are constrained "to take up an opinion less pregnant with 
obvious" (and unnecessary) "difficulties than that which is 
adopted by our wise and able guide." * 

St. Greg., Nyssa, refutes objections founded upon an identi- 
fication of this hypothesis with the dogma of the resurrection 
of the body ; he expressly combats as degrading and incon- 
ceivable the view which Dr. Momerie calls " the orthodox 
view " : 

viTokourov (TKOTrelv el cocnrep to vvv kcli to eKiri^opevov ecrrai — 
oivep el ovtcos e'trj, (pevKTov elnov toIs dvdpanois ttjv eXnlSa rr/s ava- 
oracrecos', el yap oia oTav A^yerai tov £rjv Ta dvdpa>TUva crapara, toiclv- 
ra ivakiv cnvoKaOio-TavTai, lipa Tts dreXecrTos crvpCpopa Sta Ttjs dva- 
aracrecos — tl yap ay eXeeiovoTepov 6edpa rj OTav iv ea-^aTa yrjpa 



* "Analysis of the Exposition of the Creed by John Pearson, Bishop 
of Chester," by W. H. Mill, D.D. (Art. XI. iv. 2, n. 1, p. 135. 2d ed. 
1847.) 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 297 

KarappiyvvBivTa ra aco/iara peTaTroirjdrj 77pds to el8f^6es re Kai 
cip.op<pov .* 

It may be well to indicate two references to any readers who 
may be interested in St. Gregory's reasoning. M. Martin shows 
that the to eldos of Gregory of Nyssa is equivalent practically 
to "specific form"; that this principle attracts to itself the ma- 
terial elements required to realize the form ; that in man this 
always invariable principle remains united to the soul sepa- 
rated from the mortal body ; that one day it will be the agent 
of the resurrection by recalling to itself the elements necessary 
to re-constitute the body dissolved by death.t 

" Elective affinities of organic forces are forces by which the 
vital structures and varied forms of living things are produced ; 
the equilibration of organs, and the principle of connections, 
prescribe limits and conditions for the variety and the devel- 
opment of forms." I 



* St. Greg. Nyss., " De An. et Resurr. Opp." torn. ii. § 67, edit. Morell, 
1615. 

f Martin, " La Vie Future," C. viii. 3-483, 2d ed. 

% Wheu-ell, " Hist, of Inductive Sciences," Book XVII. §§ 2, 3. St. 
Gregory of Nyssa's anticipation of this is surely most remarkable : ro 
fiev ri 'iortjKEV rwu iv y'ifuv, to Si Si aWoiuxjEwg irpocmaiv • aXXoiovTai 
piv yap Si av^t)(JS(UQ re Kai peiwatojg to ffwpa, olov 'ipana Tivd, Kai 
KaOe^ng t)\iKiag psTsvSvopsvoV — 8a-r]Ksi> Si Sia wdcnjg TpowrtG cipiTa- 
fi\i]Tov i<p' kavT<p to tiSog, twv uiraZ, iirij3\r}QkvTwv avTtp irapa ttjq 

(pv(T£u>g crjpuwv ovk t^L(TTapsvov . . . t([j OeoeiSd ttjq i/^x?/c, k.t.X. 

St. Greg. Nyss., Opp. (ut supra). 



Discussion J 



Ramsden Sermon. Preached before the University of Cambridge, 
Whit-Sunday, 1892 



" He shall glorify Me : for He shall receive of Mine, and 
shall show it unto you."— John xvi. 14. 



NINTH PRIMARY CONVICTION 

I 

The text points us to an aspect of the function of 
the Holy Spirit which is not very often distinctly 
considered. In the dispensation which Pentecost 
was to open He — the Divine Personal Comforter 
— was to " take " continually, with a living activity, 
of that illimitable fulness which was Christ's own 
possession, and announce it to Christ's people. The 
word, thrice repeated in three verses like a Divine 
refrain, implies repetition, and strengthening with 
repetition ; it is solemn, majestic, authoritative — in 
the LXX. almost sacerdotal. 

This function of the Holy Spirit is often over- 
looked. The boundless fulness of that which the 
Saviour calls "Mine," and which He pauses to 
define by "all things as many as the Father hath," 
defies the artificial analysis of a sermon. But we 
may, I hope with profit, consider the office of the 
Holy Ghost in relation (1) to Christ's words, and 
(2) to His Church. The second part of these re- 
flections will lead us directly to the subject in- 
trusted to me this day, "Church Extension over 
the Colonies and Dependencies of the British Em- 
pire." 



302 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

II 

1. The Holy Ghost is the perpetual commentator 
upon the words of Jesus. 

Let me direct your attention to four characteris- 
tics of those words : 

(1) Many of them are pervaded by allusions to 
common objects or derived from every-day experi- 
ence : birds, fishes, dogs, foxes, swine, serpents; 
in the inanimate creation, trees, flowers, waters 
that leap in light, winds that seem to tremble into 
speech, fields whitening with grain, signs of the 
footsteps of nearing summer in leaf and bud, har- 
vest, the living face of the sky — alluring, or low- 
ering sullenly ; lessons sweet or terrible, solemn or 
pathetic, from the lamp-wick, the reed, the salt, the 
loaf, the pruning of the vine or the cutting of its 
twigs, the most abject fatalities of human life; 
lessons from the piece of money, the skin wine-bot- 
tle, the play of children, the popular story of en- 
chanted city or giant's castle ; deeper things, sighs 
or sobs from the great ocean of human life, some 
murmur of whose infinite pathos reaches every one 
in the little ripples of home. 

Now, observe that if Jesus were indeed what He 
claimed to be, He must in a large degree have thus 
spoken. 

(2) The language of such a teacher must be perma- 
nent. Unless new sheets are to be added, or a revis- 
ion to be made with every new age, such a message 
must be addressed to permanent wants and feel- 
ings. 



PEBIARY CONVICTIONS 303 

In the lifetime of many of us thought has al- 
ready spoken in several dialects. Terminologies 
are dialects, a Tolapiik aspiring to be a universal 
language. Thought has talked Hegel, Coleridge, 
Mill, Hamilton, Comte (to speak only of the dead). 
Sometimes the tone of the expositors of this lan- 
guage is half unintelligibly sad, sometimes simply 
offensive. " Systems making a pretence to per- 
fect knowledge have a tendency to gender acquies- 
cence," and infallibility contradicted has a tendency 
to become abusive. The philosopher scolds at large" 
at all who are so impenetrably stupid as not to un- 
derstand or not to agree with him ; and a modest 
acceptance of the Apostles' Creed or of the JS"ew 
Testament inay make one painfully surmise some 
occult connection between the unconditioned and 
the ill-conditioned. A system which aspires to be 
universal and permanent must get rid of the argot 
of academies, and address a permanent and uni- 
versal audience. Otherwise, philosophy shares the 
doom of literature ; as style, or delineations of 
character, not founded upon any natural taste 
proper to the human species, but upon the growth 
of a particular period — factitious and affected hu- 
mors, artificially grafted on the common stock of 
real life — drop into oblivion. Shakespeare him- 
self cannot make Don Armado the euphuist or 
Holofernes the pedant quite real for us. That 
which is true of literature is equally true of phi- 
losophy. Eccentric philosophy bears within itself 
the seeds of death. 

(3) The language of such a teacher must be 



304 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

largely the language of a pathetic condescen- 
sion. 

•It must be condescending, for the Incarnation is 
the condescension of Gocl. It must be pathetic; 
that wan, white Christ, with the sweet gift of tears 
in the voice, is so pathetic. He spoke to the suffer- 
ing once, He speaks to them still. There are many 
of those who are called failures in this congrega- 
tion. The starts in the race have always been for 
the wealthy and high-born. In this day more than 
any other they are also for the retentive memory ; 
for the strong and subtle intellects that can Avorm 
or force their way into the heart of any subject, 
that can " spin the cobweb or forge the anchor of 
thought." The examination is a noble battle-field. 
A few gain splendid decorations ; but the many get 
nothing but heavy wounds and afterwards the poor 
half-pay, or the obscure trench and the forgotten 
grave. You, who win prizes and accumulate first- 
classes in triposes of which your fathers never 
heard ; chiefs of athletes, whose " mornings bound 
for night as for a victory "; you who are the heirs 
of broad acres and sound investments — it may be 
well with you, and you may deserve it, but Christ 
promises all round the field to all His soldiers. His 
invitations are to all who are weak and weary ; to 
all who faint and fall ; to all who weep and bleed. 
"I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and 
earth, that Thou didst hide these things from the 
Avise and understanding, and didst sIioav them unto 
babes." Even so, dear Lord ! Thou earnest unto 
babes ; and every sorroAvf ul beaten man is but a 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 305 

babe. A mother over the crib where her little one 
tosses feverishly does not talk to it in polysyllables, 
and so Thou speakest plain ! 

A large part of the words of a teacher like Jesus 
must, therefore, be artlessly simple, full of pathetic 
condescension. 

(4) But there must be another characteristic of a 
portion of the words of such a teacher : there must be 
a higher element also in them, be it called spiritual, 
mystic, or dogmatic. This element need not, in- 
deed could not, be the largest in bulk ; but a little 
consideration will show that it is a fallacy to take a 
quantitative test of the relative importance of the 
different parts of revelation. 

The scale at the bottom of a map is but a line 
marked with figures at the foot of a large sheet ; 
but we measure every distance by it. It affects our 
whole reading of the map, our whole conception of 
the districts. Nine tenths of a watch is represented 
by the metal and the plate, in weight and bulk the 
mainspring is small ; and. however brief may be 
such words as " I and My Father are one"; " The 
Comforter . . . whom I will send unto you from the 
Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth 
from the Father" — they are the mainspring of the 
whole structure, the scale of measurement for the 
whole map. To this portion of our Lord's words 
the test applies with peculiar force for a reason de- 
rived from the very nature of human language. 

An important consequence of the representation 
of concepts by language is that the sign is neces- 
sarily substituted for the thing signified ; we do 
20 



306 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

not, and cannot, mentally advert simultaneously to 
the whole nature and all the co-existent elements of 
the notion ; we substitute the sign for them.* 

Any word originally thus associated with a " com- 
plex cluster" of ideas has a tendency to let certain 
of them drop off or drop out, some at one time, 
some at another. We use the word without realiz- 
ing all its contents. Hence it is that traditional 
maxims, however worthy or noble — principles of 
religion, canons of ethics, political generalizations — 
become sterile dogmas. A portion of the thought 
covered by the word fades away at a particular 
time or under certain dominant influences. But 
the conservative function of language as the custo- 
dian of ancient and long-continued observation is 
never to be forgotten. While the term remains, 
the meaning may revive. The proposition is ver- 
bally the same, but it is greater or less in meaning 
at different times — to one generation " full of sap 
and fierce with life," to another an effete and feeble 
truism. The remedies for this tendency of words 
and formulas are supplied by a fancy lively enough 
to fill in all details, or by an industry of thought 
sustained enough to rediscover them — by the pas- 
sionate intuition of genius, or by the patient re- 
predication of science.f 

* Aristotle reminds us of the extraordinary mental bulk (so 
to speak) which words often assume in our imagination when 
thus decomposed into their constituents.— Arist. "Rhet." I. 
vii. 31. 

t Young students of philosophy may read with profit, and 
make available for theology, a few difficult but valuable pages 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 307 

" "Words ! words ! words !" full often, since Ham- 
let's time, the weary answer to the question, "What 
do you read?", since the Iron Duke's reply to the 
question, " What do you think of that speech ?" But 
some speakers or writers can breathe life into words. 

" The song that stirs a nation's heart 
Is in itself a deed." 

Wordsworth has closed a sonnet upon the old Brit- 
ish bards with immortal lines — 

" to harps preferring swords, • 
And everlasting deeds to burning words." 

But some burning words are everlasting deeds, and 
such are the words of the Word. 

Along the ages, generation after generation, for 
every Christian soul, for every living church, the 
words of Jesus are taken by the Holy Spirit as the 
one necessary utterance. They are divine, and they 
find a divine interpretation. Out of the text there 
leaps to life a commentary which is as strong as the 
stepping of the storm, and as burning as the fire 
of Pentecost. Again and again in the history of 
Christianity some thought or word of Christ has 
seemed dormant or antiquated. But it has revealed 
itself to some isolated souls, some musing students. 
The solitary sentinel lights his beacon, and lo ! it 
leaps from hill to hill till the sk}^ blazes with its 
warning. It was so here in the days of Simeon. It 



on the " evil consequences of casting off any of the existing con- 
notations of words" (" System of Logic," by John Stuart Mill, 
vol. ii. bk. iv. chap. iv. pp. 259-268). 



308 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

was so in Oxford fifty years ago. Pusey and his 
friends sent out their scattered little pamphlets, 
unattractively printed, unskilfully advertised, and 
after a time they listened with awe to the echoes 
of their thoughts which came back to them from 
God. It was as with the echo, to which, when the 
player touching his horn instrument commits to it 
a thin sound, he hears a magic response as if every 
hill were a carillon and a hundred chimes of bells 
tossed back to him the note reiterated and glorified. 

The Holy Ghost acts as Christ's commentator. 
He becomes the repredicator of one or other por- 
tion of the concepts in these words, " The Holy 
Ghost glorifies Christ, for He takes of Christ's and 
announces it to them." 

2. Let us now consider the commentary of the 
Holy Ghost upon the Church, which' is also Christ's, 
which the Spirit also "takes" and "declares unto 
us." 

The bestowal of personal, or even of official, gifts 
and graces was not the exclusive object of the great 
event of to-day. It was before Pentecost that Jesus 
breathed upon His apostles and said, " Keceive ye 
the Holy Ghost." 

One great purpose of "Whit-Sunday was to mani- 
fest the Church ; to force her to be visible, and to 
commit her to that visibility with all its conse- 
quences. 

During the forty days the disciples avoid appear- 
ing as a visible, constituted body ; it was with the 
Church as with all true life — " not life from organi- 
zation, but organization from life." " As they were 



PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 309 

all with one accord in one place," something physi- 
cally extraordinary occurred, yet, as St. Luke hints 
to us, of such a nature as human language can 
scarcely with perfect truth pretend to describe — 
" a roar as of a strong blast sweeping on ; tongues 
parting as of fire." Even fanaticism can do much ; 
though fanaticism is only the contagious seizure of 
superstition, which is the supernatural vulgarized. 
But this was enthusiasm ; truth, after a momentary 
smile of rapture, making its home in a depth of calm 
in human hearts. For a while the pent-up energy, 
the great thought, which came upon her, struggled 
for some expression. Deep within her certainly 
was the germ of all her powers and all her history. 
The rich, passionate synthesis of that first great 
gift was to be developed by the Church's efforts, 
as the years passed on, into clear, persuasive elo- 
quence ; into healings at first sporadic, then scien- 
tific ; into art, music, poetry, ritual, liturgies ; into 
dogmatic theology, philosophy, criticism ; into deal- 
ings with every form of human aspiration and of 
social wants (as when the great Cambridge theolo- 
gian finds in the spirit of his Master's words the 
secret of conciliation between selfish capital and 
equally selfish labor) ; above all, into missions that 
go to the ends of the earth, or follow men already 
Christians with the Word and sacraments. 

I repeat, that one great end of Pentecost was that 
the Church should no longer " sit still in Jerusalem"; 
but that, having been " clothed with the garment of 
love," she should go forth to the most distant lands. 

To no branch of the Church since the day of Pen- 



310 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

tecost more than to our own has the obligation of 
rising to the measure of visibility required of her 
by her history been more evident or more arduous. 

Let us survey her prospects and her duties in re- 
lation to the colonies and dependencies of the Brit- 
ish Empire. 

(a) Her prospects. The field of work is ever 
enlarging before her. 

There are few things more striking than, year 
after year, to look closely at the cover of one of 
those " slender books" in which the S. P. G. unfolds 
its vast design, and to compare it with the cover of 
the year before. Pound a design of the seal are 
the names of the regions to which the Society has 
extended its work, and the date at which the con- 
nection began. The first two points and dates are, 
"a.d. 1701, Continent of Europe; 1702, American 
Colonies, now United States." The last is, "1890, 
Mashonalancl." 

But what, it may be asked, is the prospect for 
our island Church ? Is she not doomed to compara- 
tive obscurity, to the frigid decorum of the church 
of the well-to-do ? Like other travellers, " she 
changes her sky and not her nature " beyond the 
ocean. She is still in essence an " institution as 
purely local as the Court of Common Pleas"; "a- 
half-recognized department of the Home Office," 
" trying to overlay her own colonies with a feeble 
Anglicanism." It is her way to go on, hopelessly 
distanced by younger, rougher, readier competi- 
tors ; out-prayed, out-preached, out- worked, out-num- 
bered ; her ministers eclipsed by men less edu.cated, 



PRIMAKT CONVICTIONS 311 

less sensitively alive to tlie blood-curdling enormity 
of a false quantity ; her services too fatally associ- 
ated with, the scent of drawing-rooms and the pomp 
of courts to be more than tolerated in democratic 
communities of the Anglo-Saxon stock ; her stately 
self elbowed out, and left to mutter among dis- 
crowned royalties and bankrupt aristocracies. Plau- 
sibly said— nay, keenly felt ! 

But encouragement comes to us from many quar- 
ters. I will mention two. 

1st. "We may derive boldness from the fortunes of 
the Church in the old English colonies, now a great 
independent republic. 

At the close of the War of Independence (a war 
of parties, not of nations), the Protestant Episcopal 
Church of America, in addition to prejudice against 
her of Puritanical origin, labored under the peril- 
ous suspicion of Tory and British proclivities. Xo 
doubt there was one circumstance in her favor. 

As the stranger sails up the Potomac on his pil- 
grimage to Mount Yernon he probably turns upon 
the deck as he nears the small city of Alexandria, 
and* sees in distant sunshine beyond the bright broad 
river the Capitol at Washington, let down like a 
dream in white marble from the dazzling sky ; he 
may be told of the little parish church in the town 
where George Washington and his oldest friends 
worshipped, Sunday after Sunday, according to the 
simple usage of the day. As he disembarks a little 
farther on he walks up a gentle steep on a track 
that leads to an open vault. There rest the ashes 
of " the first, the last, the best, the Cincinnatus 



312 PRIMARY COXVICTIONS 

of the "West." If a churchman, the stranger may 
remember that the words of hope in our prayer- 
book were spoken over the sacred dust before which 
every man who loves the name of liberty instinc- 
tively uncovers his head. There, too, lies another, 
the stately lady, fit wife for a hero, who " had heard 
the first gun and the last gun of each of her hus- 
band's campaigns." Tor the last weary months of 
her pilgrimage she looked from the window of her 
room over the magnolias to her soldier's resting- 
place. And as she had been married with the ser- 
vice of our Church, so its solemn beauty, its austere 
pathos, sounded over the broken heart which was 
laid by the side of Washington. And now after 
ninety years the Church of Washington grows and 
prospers. All the omens of the future are with her. 
She has kept the faith. Her prayer-book has come 
out from the great pain and peril of revision at such 
a crisis, not perhaps unscathed, but with all essen- 
tials intact. If something was yielded in one direc- 
tion, the balance of doctrine was redressed in an- 
other. 

Her outlook is full of hope ; above all, the Church 
seems awake from end to end. In great cities her 
progress is undeniable. In the far West, indeed, the 
Church is still struggling. But the words in which 
a great Latin historian speaks of the prophetic am- 
bition which made the walls of young Rome so 
much too vast — " in spem futuras multitudinis " — 
are coming out in large letters over the battlements 
of the western Zion. " God brought them out of 
Egypt, He has as it were the strength of a unicorn." 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 313 

2d. But we have encouragement nearer and more 
direct. Many speeches are delivered annually at the 
meetings of our religious societies in London, and 
there are many who derive pleasure and profit from 
those vast volumes of talk. On the 19th of June, 1S91, 
a speech was delivered at the jubilee meeting of the 
Colonial Bishopric Fund, which will not soon be 
forgotten. The central fact which, the orator had 
to state was one which almost outstrips imagina- 
tion, and which had been brought about within 
fifty years of his own life. The bishoprics of the 
English Church outside these islands — ten in 1S11 
— had multiplied into eighty-two in 1891, and the 
work corresponding had increased more than eight- 
fold. The principle of voluntary action within the 
Church was made the central point of interest. 
1ST or was grave, half -veiled sarcasm wanting in order 
to show the effect of the system of " political inter- 
vention " in starting Church work, and blinding the 
eyes of churchmen to the vast fund upon which 
they had to draw in the wealth of Christian faith 
and Christian love. The argument may have had 
somewhat too much the effect of an object-lesson 
upon certain possible incidental evils of establish- 
ment and endowment. Probably many would have 
wished to hear it pointed out that the splendid 
voluntary liberality of 1841-91 had behind it and 
below it the still more voluntary liberality of past 
ages; that the ISTational establishment and endow- 
ment is one of the fibres in the root of the great 
tree which yields the fruits of Colonial endowment ; 
above all, to sav that the Church of England is a 



314 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

part of the history of England (" tempora prseterita 
tamquara Dei dominium "), that the nation which 
denies its past renounces its future. But the speech 
was a powerful demonstration of the growth of 
the Church in the colonies and dependencies of the 
British Empire. 

(b) Our duties in regard to the extension, and the 
reasons for them : 

1st. One great reason for personal exertion comes 
out for all who will thoughtfully consider the re- 
ligious history of our past colonization, and apply 
it to the present extension of our race. 

The increase of the colonial episcopate, and of 
the influences which go with it, is often treated as 
a question of mere ecclesiastical etiquette or Ejdis- 
copalian sectarianism. 

Let me again turn to the religious history of what 
were once our American colonies. The history of 
Massachusetts affords an instructive lesson of the 
loss sustained by an English community in being 
deprived of the temperate influence of the English 
Church. New England was from the first scarcely 
touched by Church influence. The Pilgrim Fathers 
landed, "safe from the storms and prelates' rages," 
to better the lessons of intolerance under which they 
had writhed at home. Massachusetts grew into a 
petty theocracy, and Mather's ringer was thicker 
than Laud's loin. 

I turn for a few minutes to the life and theology 
of Jonathan Edwards, the personal friend of Whit- 
field, and the direct inspirer (of course in things not 
doctrinal) of Wesley. Jonathan Edwards was born 



PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 315 

in 1T03, and died in 1758, During the period of 
his influence "Wesley had worked in Georgia, and 
Whitefield had thrice visited America. Gifted 
with almost every personal and intellectual grace, 
Edwards accepted the Calvinistic scheme as the one 
ultimate law of religious thought, and the exegesis 
on which it reposes as infallible truth. The main 
lines of Edwards's system were these : 

God's justice lies at the root of all. But we have 
no right to measure God's infinite justice by our 
analogous conception of it. In passing up the scale 
from the finite to the infinite the attribute of God 
may become absolutely contradictory to our natural 
conception of it. So with the attribute of mercy. 
God is just and merciful according to a system of His 
own. On this principle we must deal with man and 
with the hereafter. Man is not only " very far gone 
from original righteousness," and born in sin, but 
" as innocent as young children seem to us, yet, if 
they are out of Christ, they are not so in God's sight, 
but are young vipers, and infinitely more hateful 
than vipers." These words seem to have taxed his 
people more than any others. Every heart that has 
been trained in the atmosphere of the JSTew Testa- 
ment feels that there is something of childlike in 
the saint, and something of saintlike in the child. 
" The bigger part of men who have died heretofore 
have gone to hell." The picture of souls in hell 
by Dante or Milton is poorly grotesque compared 
with this fiercely uncompromising reality of Ed- 
wards. 

The culminating -point was reached in a sermon 



316 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

preached at Enfield, Connecticut, in 1741. This 
sermon of imprecation ends thus : "God holds them 
over the pit of hell much as one holds a spider or 
some loathsome insect over the fire. They are ten 
thousand times more abominable in His eyes than a 
venomous serpent in ours. It will not be as if God 
and the redeemed put these sufferers out of sight. 
Father and mother will rejoice as they witness eter- 
nal justice poured out upon their own offspring. 
For our nature will be changed ; what is virtue here 
will be no virtue there." Those who were present at 
the Enfield sermon say that the low clear voice never 
grew tremulous with entreaty nor stormy with pas- 
sion. The great master of religious emotion never 
even raised his hands, but sometimes leaned upon 
one arm and looked down the chapel, generally 
reading with little or no gesture from a pile of man- 
uscript. But beneath the snow were the fires of a 
volcano. 

Such were the master-principles of the teacher 
who brought about the " Great Awakening," which 
spread from New England over the American colo- 
nies, and thence to England, Scotland, and Ireland. 
But in 1750 the awakening and the active ministry 
were to end. The mystic drunk with God, the 
Aquinas of Calvinism, the prophet of New England, 
the reasoner whom Chalmers pronounced " the first 
of theologians," and Robert Hall, " the greatest of 
the sons of men," were fiercely driven out in an 
ignominious squabble. Why, it may be asked, re- 
call this history ? How does it bear on my present 
subject ? Thus : the Unitarianism of New England 



PRLMAKY CONVICTIONS 317 

was the direct result of this teaching. The intellect 
of man and the heart of woman rose in rebellion. 
;< This God of gigantic vengeance, these saints with- 
out a heart, exulting in the eternal misery of fa- 
ther, mother, wife, child ! Better the scanty lights 
of natural religion than belief in the one; better 
than the other the poor lost soul, turning with a 
bitter tenderness to the dear old days and to the 
brothers in the father's home ; better half the vices 
in the list of the moral philosophers than this 
frightful virtue. "Whatever comes of it we will 
have no more of this. "Whatever be true, this is 
not. If it is in the Bible, so much the worse for 
the Bible." 

A sketch like this is unjust to Edwards. It is 
meant as no polemic against modern Calvinism. 
There was in him far more than the austere bright- 
ness, the fierce cold flash, as of his own ]STew Eng- 
land spring. Not only do we find touches as of 
Wordsworth's spirit ; at times a sweet inward de- 
light in God, a sense of the majesty and grace of 
Christ, laid hold of his being. His natural terror of 
thunder is overcome, his heart becomes like the ro- 
mantic child's, and he sets himself "to view the 
clouds and see the lightnings play," and claps his 
hands and cries " Bonny, bonny !" 

This was the source of the TJnitarianism of Massa- 
chusetts. In that community have been noble souls, 
tender hearts, high teachers, sweet singers. It seems 
as if at present (mainly, perhaps, under one great 
influence) " the hearts of the children were turning 
to their fathers," and a loftier, nobler, more com- 



318 PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

plete conception of Jesus, God and Man, dawning 
upon Massachusetts. 

And the moral for our present purpose is — Eng- 
lish-speaking people must have a religion. A French 
master of style says, " Those who, like me, have re- 
ceived a Catholic education, keep traces of it ; but 
these traces are not dogmas, but dreams." The Eng- 
lishman is the worst sceptic as truly as " the worst 
rake" in the world. With him the traces of mis- 
understood dogmas are fierce exaggerations ; the 
traces of lost dogmas are not dreams, but agonies. 
It is of importance that the doctrines of such men 
should be sound and temperate. In communities 
over the sea destined to expand into nations, the 
sober and moderating spirit of the English Church 
should grow with the growth of society. The Eng- 
lish Church, rightly represented, is no imperious 
asserter of her own power. She is no rash prose- 
lytizer, yet her very existence implies her historic 
continuity and connection with a great past. Her 
Creeds proclaim the eternal on outlines of truth, 
apart from particular theories about them — majestic 
alike in what they teach and in what they refrain 
from teaching, in their assertion and in their reserve. 
She does not exaggerate minutice of ritual ; but, as 
in the book of Numbers, the " law of fringes" is less 
than the "law of holiness." She admits different 
tastes, lest each school should become a schism and 
each idiosyncrasy a sect. She does not harshly 
deny the grace, the love, the Christ-like works of 
other communions. Yet she keeps the substance of 
all intrusted to her, like 



PEHIAEY CONVICTIONS 319 

"Ton marble woman with the marble rose 
Loose in her hand she never will let fall." 

And being what she is, she suits all people sprung 
from the remote forefathers of the imperial race, 
now one hundred and twenty millions strong. The 
Church of the future shall cover many lands and 
embrace many races. A Catholic Christianity! 
ISTot a jot reft from the old heritage of the Church, 
not a sac redness stolen from a sacrament, not a 
gift removed, not a presence withdrawn, not a 
beauty paled — the fabric fairer, the rents repaired, 
the broken segments reunited into the perfect arch ! 
And as men contemplate the world and the Church ; 
as they find in society just the impulse, in the 
Church just the home, they shall chant the " Te 
Deum" with a deeper meaning. "Thou art the 
King of glory, O Christ !" Yes. " He shall glorify 
Me : for He shall receive of Mine, and shall show it 
unto you." 

There are two other more pressing and obvious 
reasons for exertion in extending the Church in 
the colonies and dependencies of the British Em- 
pire. 

2d. In this we are acting for the highest good — it 
may be of those near and dear to us. The families 
of many of us may send an emigrant to Canada or 
Australia, an adventurer to Mashonaland. 

Let us remember that these are places where men 
are sick, and no footsteps of the ambassadors of the 
Prince of Peace tread softly upon the staircase; 
passionate, and no restraining charm breathes from 
Sunday services ; where, in the lonely forest, in the 



320 PKIMAEY CONVICTIONS 

snowy waste, by the green upland, or on the margin 
of the swamps of the African river, there are none 
of those soft and solemn voices which will not allow 
the most material to forget that " man's noisy years 
are but as moments in the deeper life of the eternal 
silence." 

3d. Yet another reason (one of solemn import) to 
which I can only advert, is the work done by our ad- 
vancing Church for the multitude of heathen with 
whom she is brought in contact. God's grace meets 
many of them in lands not their own. Thus, a vast 
and precious work for India is done on the soil of 
Africa. There are at least forty-two thousand Hin- 
doos and Mohammedans in the Diocese of Maritz- 
burg ; more than one thousand boys are under in- 
struction. The cathedral in Antigua (I hear from 
a colored clergyman) by its services has awakened 
first the curiosity, then the ardent faith, of many of 
the Chinese who have gone there for labor. For 
mission work in India, if you have doubt, do not 
turn to clerical reports, to the " partisan pages " of 
the Church Missionary or S. P. G. Consult the 
opinions of laymen — Lawrence, Frere, Napier, Tem- 
ple — nay, the passionless pages of the Indian Blue- 
book. 

From every religious man, then, we may ask 
prayer and subscription for the colonial Church, 
or for missions to the heathen. Let each take some 
one spot. In this great home of the youth of Eng- 
land, in the university of Martyn, Selwyn, Macken- 
zie, may I not ask for more ? 

We spoke of Christ's words. Oh, those strange 



PEIMAEY CONVICTIONS 321 

creative words ! Sometimes Christ looks right over 
His contemporaries. He feels that His voice has 
infinite volume; He can throw it where He will. 
We are so different, and He claims so differently 
from us. 

For most of us there are the allowed sweetnesses, 
the tender commonplaces, of home. Some of ns 
look forward to a life of study in this place, to 
growing old within college walls. Many more 
think of the pastor's work in some fair English 
shire, of the sweet old rectory and the parish 
church, with its history in every stone, the dream 
of ripening for the grave through slow changes. 
Such lives may be holy as well as happy. 

But there are other cases. He sees something in 
others — the stuff of which heroes, martyrs, mission- 
aries are made — He calls His own. He who is so 
gentle half breaks their very hearts that He may 
set the broken heart again, and teach it the sublime 
duty of self-sacrifice. The door of heaven is opened 
for a moment ; a voice dim and awfnl, then trium- 
phantly sweet (victrix delectati), sounds along the 
corridors : " Sell all thou hast . . . whosoever shall 
not bear his cross cannot be My disciple. . . . Dis- 
tribute through and through," to the outcast, to the 
exiles from home, to the heathen — earth's poorest 
ones. 

O words of Christ ! words " taken " by the Spirit ! 
how sweet they are, and how strong ! Come this 
day and strike to life leaders of the Church's chiv- 
alry. The regiment of missionaries is the noblest in 
the army of the Cross — Mashonaland and ISgamiland 

21 



322 PRIMARY CONVICTIONS 

are waiting to be inscribed upon the flag that flaps 
in the storm of battle. The breath of the Spirit 
takes the word of Christ (" Preach the Gospel to 
every creature") and announces it to us. 



THE END 



H 157 82 






y *°%;?P\,/ fV^SSV* "\*^\/ 






4 'fr <£ / 

























feX **•:»> A^fc% /.tffe^ 









"fe. V 



0* 



^ ••«»• V^ # V :A: V = 



















* ^ 






* - - « • 



^ 




vv 















s> 



,* .^ "V ( .W > v ^. •*?«»•• ,<F *+- 






T 



*>d* 









